Reaching in the Dark
by Aria2302
Summary: What might you do if, after all your connections to the world are stripped away, you're left with nothing but a gun and a mission from someone who tells you that it's right? Out of desperation not to lose that last link to the world, what kind of strength might it take not to fire, if only once? Canon through TWS, then AU. Bucky/OC, Sequel to "Who is Alice Shaw?"
1. Breathe

**Prologue**

* * *

Waking the Soldier was a delicate process. The Soldier couldn't be left in cryostasis with a completely empty brain – the body needed to remember how to walk, how to use a spoon, how to understand language, and how to fire a weapon. The Soldier needed to retain an understanding of stealth, and tactics. Other than that, it didn't matter. Empty space could be jammed on top of memories, like piling huge cardboard boxes in the front room of a house to make it look full.

When that didn't work long-term, more aggressive methods became necessary to keep the Soldier in line. A complex array of electrodes was hooked up to the Soldier, then attached to a system that delivered a precise sequence of shocks that Hydra had found essentially carpet-bombed the Soldier's emotion-related memories. The Soldier was left with skills – machinery, weaponry, and strategy – but those related to emotion were suppressed for several days.

The Soldier could grow unstable after that time, and would need to be re-stabilized to ensure mission success. This generally took no more than thirty minutes, and was considered a mild inconvenience. In shaping the century, there was no room for hesitation, or emotion. Left without re-stabilization, the Soldier's previous memories would return as they were triggered by the environment, and without the context of other related memories to provide a framework, would confuse and distract from the mission.

These procedures, and the careful steps used to ensure compliance, were recorded in a small red book with a black star – starred like the Soldier – to maintain consistency across handlers. A series of trigger words activated a base protocol of compliance, and established the Soldier's commander for the mission, until the Soldier was to be placed back into storage or otherwise re-stabilized.

Consistency.

Accuracy.

Vigilance.

These were the desired traits for a Hydra Commander.

The Soldier was Hydra's greatest asset, and could not be allowed to deviate.

* * *

**1991**

A ringing of activation bells cut through the silence surrounding the void.

Sensation returned swiftly with a fanged bite.

The air was cold.

The Soldier didn't like cold.

The cold felt like the empty time between missions, spent idly drifting in a vast expanse of _nothingness_ where he so often failed to remember the passage of time, then needed to catch up all at once. He knew if he breathed in, the air would bite at his lungs like mocking pinpricks.

_Breathe_, a female voice instructed in his head.

He breathed. The cold nipped at his lungs, as he had expected.

_One more,_ the voice asked.

He repeated the breath.

_Good,_ came the praise.

The Soldier opened his eyes. Foggy, uncertain of the world around him, he was led from his icy chamber to a different chair. He remembered this chair – from before and every before that had ever been. This was the way the fog in his brain was cleared away, leaving a serene emptiness where only useful things remained.

The clearing away of uncertain things hurt, but necessity overruled comfort. The Soldier's body tightened and cried out in pain as his mind was cleared, like a sharp blade cutting through a bed of grass to reveal the bare soil below. It took away the thought of a coarse sensation that rippled across his fingertips. It took away a burning in his chest that felt like running out of air. It took away an ache in his arm, where he did not have an arm but a weapon. It took away confusion, and fear, and uncertainty. It stilled the waters of his mind.

The pain stopped running through the Soldier's body, and words echoed sharply in the room.

"_Zhelaniye. Rzhavyy. Semnadtsat."_

Thoughts slid into place, like bullets into an empty cartridge. An identification of command and of purpose.

_Click._

Of shaping the century.

_Click_.

"_Rassvet. Pech'. Devyat'."_

Then the voice. _Breathe. _The consistent command and stability of the voice. The only thing that remained both before and after uncertainty was cleared away; it was attached to something with no name below the bare soil of his mind. The Soldier's chest heaved in reflexive compliance. _Good_, the voice praised.

_Click. _

"_Dobroserdechnyy. Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu. Odin."_

The useful certainties followed – the feeling of loading a rifle, of checking a sight.

_Click._

Following a target. Breaking a spine.

_Click click._

"_Gruzovoy vagon."_

The Soldier's body slackened as threads severed and burned in his mind. It was a relief to feel them fall away, to be left only with the things of which he could be certain. They would be back, slithering in from the dark, but for a short time he would be certain.

The magazine, full of ammunition, loaded in his mind. This weapon did not come equipped with a safety.

"_Dobroye utro, Soldat," _his commander greeted.

The Soldier opened his eyes.

"_Ya gotov otvechat'."_

Ready to comply.

* * *

A/N: Welcome back, readers! I know so many of you were devastated by the end of Who is Alice Shaw (WIAS from now on), and many (_many_) of you messaged me to beg for a sequel. Fear not! This has been in the works since I was about halfway through writing WIAS, and I never intended to leave you hanging forever. I can't say I didn't enjoy watching you squirm, though.

I intend to do some serious content-writing before I start posting full chapters, so please have patience. Consider this a promise to continue the story!

I love reviews!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	2. The USS LST-6

**Act I: Resurrection**

**November 17, 1944  
Rouen, France**

Alice boarded the USS LST-6 with haste as the men poured on board. She said 'excuse me' and 'pardon there' more times than she cared to count, being a half-to-full-head shorter than the milling crowd. The men hustled into the wide maw of the transport ship, swallowing the crowd whole like some ancient marine monster.

"Lieutenant Shaw?" a voice called through the mill. "Miss Shaw!" A hand waved, trying to get her attention. Alice cut left through the crowd, feeling not unlike a wounded animal swimming for shore against the current. She gasped a little as a hand pulled her up a step and she could finally see more than six inches in front of her nose.

"Captain Ben Franklin, pleasure to meet you, Ma'am." he held out a hand for her to shake, which she did gleefully.

"Did your parents have a love for history, Sir?" she asked to accompany the firm grip.

He grinned, releasing her hand. "You could say that. Your berth is up front and up two levels – picked the best lodgings in the house just for you – figured you might want some rack time."

"Much appreciated," Alice sighed gratefully, following him through a tight series of doors and steep stairs up to the Main Deck. She breathed in the fresh river air as it rushed over the steel decking. The view was short-lived as she had to trot to keep up with the Captain's long stride.

A few curious faces peered from their quarters as she walked by, evidently intrigued by her presence, but the officers also seemed to want rest of their own, the doors closing with muted noises.

Captain Franklin gestured to a door at the very edge of the hall. "Don't close the door to the head – it tends to lock itself, and then we'd have to come rescue you. It'd be mighty embarrassing, ma'am."

"Don't close the bathroom door; got it. Anything else?" she asked.

"Window gives you a nice breeze, if you feel a little green," he offered.

Alice smiled. "I don't get seasick, but thanks anyway."

"Get comfortable – we've got a slow slither down river, then more funny shapes to cross the channel. Five to ten hours, give or take an exciting few minutes."

Alice let out a swift breath. "Wow – ok. Definitely time for a Blanket Drill."

"We'll get you to London in no time flat – enjoy the ride." He gave a slight salute, more like a wave, and closed her door as he exited.

Alice looked around the tiny officer's bunk, taking in the tiny circle of glass that claimed to be a window and the narrow spit of real estate advertised as a bed. She dumped her bag on the upper bunk and kicked off her boots to sit on the lower bunk, not bothering to take off her med pack or even shed her jacket.

The mattress was softer than anything she'd had for over a year, and it was barely an inch thick. _Heaven_, she thought, flopping over onto the equally thin pillow. She fell asleep almost instantly, cradled by a comfort she'd forgotten to miss. The rocking of the boat in the water kept her under as they journeyed to the sea.

* * *

_The soldier stood and aimed as if to fire at Dum Dum, but froze as a rock sailed over his head – missing his head by a mile, but gathering his attention and causing him to reflexively turn. Alice surged forward to crowd his space and make her a more difficult target. She swiftly removed the knife from the German's side, turned it, and jammed it upwards into his ribs._

_He screamed, like a dying child. He screamed, louder than a dying animal. He screamed, blood pouring from his side, drenching her in the evidence of her destruction. It came out like a river, washing her away, away, away from her friends. She called out to them for help, but they couldn't hear her. Their backs remained turned as she grasped at the branches rushing by in reverse, but her bloody hands slipped too easily from their rough surface._

_She was carried far away from her friends, the screaming still singing loud, sharp, and wild in her ears. Bullets rained down in a hailstorm from above, singing in violent but melodious chorus. The words cut through the thick air, singing 'Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Mater dei'._

_Alice tried to shield herself from the lethal fire, but it required dunking her head in the river of blood. Her side burned as the fire of God came seeking vengeance from above. Her lungs burned as she nearly drowned in the churning, rolling waves._

* * *

Alice gasped for air as she sat upright in her bunk and immediately smacked her head on the steel underside of the bunk above. She fell back, rubbing her sore forehead and swearing profusely. Alice kicked the sweltering blanket off her legs and swung them around, leaning out of the bunk to try and catch her breath.

_I need a drink_, she thought, groaning as she stood. _But I doubt they've got anything stronger than water on board_. Washing her face would have to suffice. Her toes curled slightly up and away from the cold steel, and she absently slipped her feet into her boots to ward off the chill but didn't bother to lace them up.

The floor was surprisingly steady as she walked to the little toilet off her cabin, chancing a glance out the tiny porthole to the gentle waves of the English Channel. The light of late afternoon was starting to yield a pretty red sky, visible occasionally though the large clouds.

Alice stepped over the high threshold of the bathroom, and turned on the water. She let some accumulate in the sink before splashing it on her face, scrubbing a little with her hands to scrape the salt away. _Much better_, she thought.

A loud alarm cut through her thoughts and the relative peace of the moment. A beating of boots joined the clamor, responding to a call that Alice had yet to process. The ship heaved suddenly to one side, throwing Alice against the bathroom wall and slamming the door shut behind her. Her head rang soundly against a steel wall and her arm twisted at a funny angle. Her cry of pain was completely drowned out by an explosive noise so loud – _so_ _loud_ – that she couldn't hear at all.

Alice tried to stand but the ship lurched again, bucking violently like a wild horse. Alice's head cracked against the wall, in the same spot, and the world went dark.

* * *

Alice woke cold, wet, and confused. The world was in motion beneath her in a distinctly nauseating way, and she pressed a hand against her stomach to quell the motion. Her hand fell to her side, splashing into icy-cold water. She recoiled the hand sharply, wiping it against her shirt. _What the hell?_

She stood, unsteady on her feet, and the cold water clung to her body, making her slip and slow to movement. It didn't help at all that the room had apparently tilted when she was out, with the floor leaning at a dangerous angle.

Water was burbling up through the sides of the door in an apparent breach. Alice took the handle and gave it a swift turn and push, hoping she could out-muscle the rising water. The handle, however, failed to catch. Alice blinked and tried it again.

No luck.

Realization dawned over her in an icy wave far colder than the water rising around her knees. _"Don't close the door to the head – it tends to lock itself, and then we'd have to come rescue you. It'd be mighty embarrassing, ma'am."_

The ship groaned and the floor dipped dangerously. Alice braced herself against the door, trying to avoid breaking her nose against the steel. Her brain rushed to come up with an escape plan. _Okay,_ she rushed_, I'm trapped in the head, and the ship is taking on water_. Her brain couldn't wrap around the word 'sinking'.

Alice searched the bathroom, opening cabinets to find nothing of any use; bar of soap, thin washcloth, and a toothbrush. _Useless_, she swore internally as she didn't bother closing the cabinet doors. Alice ran a hand over her face, tucking one thumb into her belt – Alice's usual standing position.

Nothing in her kit, braced against her lower back still, would be much help either. She had bandages, medicinal plants, sewing needles and suture thread, and whatever else Bucky had managed to tuck in there without her knowing. _Doesn't hurt to look_, she reasoned as she slid the pouch around to her front. Alice's kit was all she had.

The water sloshed around her knees, splashing upsettingly high as she fought to keep her balance. _Damn_, she thought_, I was right_. Her pack contained exactly what it was supposed to, add a few shoelaces and a small red-handled pocketknife. Alice let the lid flap shut, and pressed a hand to her chest, feeling for the comforting weight of Bucky's round in an attempt to slow her frantic heart. She wrapped the cording around her fingers, letting the weight of the round tighten the tether. _I just need a portable battering ram is all_, she thought manically.

The bullet tapped against her sternum and Alice's brain did a little reset. _I don't need a battering ram for the whole door_, she thought slowly_, just the lock. _Alice yanked at the cording and the bullet flew up an out of her shirt, smacking her in the face.

Alice held the round close to her face, examining the head stamp and primer cap. She was looking for any mark, any indication that Bucky had diffused the round before giving it to her. The cap was present and pristine – no indication that the gunpowder had been removed from the round.

A nervous bubble of laughter tore through her throat as her hand struggled with the knotting around the round, trying to pull it free. _Dodo gave me a live round_, she thought as she both mentally berated Bucky and praised the heavens, _full of explosives._

She pulled the round off of the cording, clenching the bullet between her teeth she pulled hard, _hard_, at the round. It slipped free – and so did a few of her teeth – but the motion startled her. The surge of adrenaline had invigorated her muscles but royally screwed with coordination. As a result, Alice swallowed the bullet like a modern person might accidentally swallow an ice cube. She gagged, her stomach rebelling against the odd action, but she didn't have the time to dwell on it.

Alice shoved the casing, still full of gunpowder, into the lock mechanism. She took the thin wash cloth from the open cabinet behind her and tucked it around the casing as tight as possible to seal it in place. _Now for the fun part_, she thought, opening her bag. She pulled out the biggest sewing needle she had and Bucky's pocket knife. She was going to make her own firing pin.

Alice didn't have the luxury of time to take deep breaths to steady her hand. She held the needle against the primer cap with her left hand, and lined up the handle of the knife with the other. Alice slammed the knife towards the needle as hard as she could.

The needle skittered off to one side, missing the blasting cap but succeeding in shoving the needle deep into her hand. Alice took a steadying breath as she pulled the needle out. She wiped the blood on her shirt to prevent any more accidents. A trickle of blood and hot pain reminded her of the limited time, in case the water at waist-level wasn't enough of a reminder.

The casing had maybe three grams of gunpowder in it, but she needed it to work, _needed_ it to blast the lock open. For all of that to happen, she needed to hit the primer with her firing pin. Alice took one last steadying breath and cracked at the needle with Bucky's knife.

The less than dramatic _whoompf_ heard on Alice's side of the door was a welcome sound, sweeter than any chorus of angels. Alice seized the door handle and turned it with all of the muscle she could manage, and it _turned_. She had to heave and push against the water trying to keep her trapped in the bathroom. The water line surged up to her shoulders as she forced the door open.

Alice's bunk was swiftly losing the battle to the ocean, pouring rapidly into the room from a hole in the side of the ship that dipped up and down above and below the water line of the ocean. Alice felt like she was swimming in a loose parachute for all the clothes she was wearing. She pulled her shirt open, popping all the buttons and ripping it free. She didn't notice that her dog tags had gotten tangled up into the sleeve as she dropped it with a _slap_ against the surface of the water, shucking her boots as well.

Alice mis-timed her dive for the opening, catching it as the boat tucked under a high wave. The water pushed her back against the ship, and the rocking steel pushing her down, down, down. Bubbles of precious air escaped through her mouth as she descended forcefully into the dark gloom of the English Channel.

The ship pinning her down slowed its roll, and Alice was able to push away. Her lungs burned for oxygen as she swam for the light through the frigid, murky water. She couldn't feel her hands very well, and her feet were just big globs of meat flopping away at the ends of her tiring legs.

Alice was so cold, she could feel her brain trying to shrivel up inside her skull; she was sure of it. She was so cold, Alice was sure her body was auto-amputating a toe or a foot or a hand. She was so cold, Alice could hear the warm chuckle of a friend, tucking a warm blanket around her shoulders to ward off the winter snow. _You stay under there; I'll get a fire started._

_No arguments here_, Alice thought. She wanted to sink lower into the blanket, but couldn't seem to find the edges. She thought maybe, if she closed her eyes, it would be easier to feel the wool. But her hands were so cold… so cold.

Alice felt a pull – behind her chest, tugging her _through_ gravity and _through_ light and _through._ Gravity spun her like a test tube in a centrifuge, threatening to tear her apart when the cold had just tried to keep her together forever, forever. Through her closed eyes the colors warped past a spectrum she had known, blinding her and showing her a world _beyond_ beyond.

Alice could sort of feel when the spinning stopped and although she still felt a rocking sensation, the surface beneath her was sturdy and still.

"Goddamit, kid – _breathe_," a gruff voice commanded.

_Breathe?_ Alice thought. She tried to move her chest but found it too full of other things to bother with air. A memory flickered in the reflexive part of her brain and Alice choked on the water from the Channel, coughing it up in burbling spurts.

"There you go, get it all out." The gruff voice sounded relieved, helping Alice roll over onto her side and clear her lungs.

Alice could barely pry her eyes open – they felt scratchy and old. They watered as she did it anyway, her hands big blurry blobs as she tried to orient herself on what felt like an old wood floor. "Wh-" she stammered, unable to make real sounds properly. "Wh-?" The question danced away, falling out of her mouth.

Her eyes focused poorly on the hand helping her to stand, following it up to a face with one glowing, robotic eye. "You're back, kid," Cable informed her. "Mission accomplished."

* * *

A/N: This was the chapter that made me estimate May as a release date. I started work on this in maybe… December? It's hard, because there's not a lot of dialogue. My typical method for getting through some rough content is to write out all of the dialogue, then go back and fill in the action and the emotions. When there's not so much talking… it's a lot more challenging. I also needed to do it justice because I'm sure every one of you was curious – desperately so – to know if/how Alice escaped death on the LST-6.

I'm experiencing a bit of a block getting through some of the upcoming content, and I'm hoping posting this will help clear that up.

I love my reviewers!SabakuNoGaara426, Sanguinary Tide, EnjoytheSilence03, KannaKyomu, TikiKiki, QueenofCloud, Silvia, TimeLordsRule, and SomebodyWhoCares!

**PLEASE REVIEW! **Every review I receive reminds me to go write! Lots and lots of reviews = faster updates.


	3. Leave No Trace

Alice sat at her table, wet hair plastered to her head, shivering slightly underneath a thick blanket. The light birdsong of May filtered smoothly in through the open window, the late morning air a little chillier than would have been comfortable while soaking wet. Alice stared at her hands. "How long was I gone?"

Cable checked the clock on the microwave. "Eight minutes."

Alice didn't nod to indicate she'd heard him. Her face was blank, still slowly processing the change in her environment, still realizing there were more pieces to the puzzle that had been left in the box, but now that she had all the pieces, it was time to reorganize the picture in front of her.

"How did you know," she hissed menacingly. "How did you know I'd be on that boat? I threw the beacon away." Her eyes filled with fury as her head lifted to glare at Cable.

He held her furious stare with his own measure of cool detachment. "The beacon was a dummy. I knew you'd be on that boat because that's when history says Lieutenant Alice Shaw died."

Some of Alice's fury was replaced by naïve confusion. "…what?" her voice took on a disbelieving note. If the beam-me-up button had been a dummy, then… what? She'd never had a choice at all? "So then…" Her hand sought comfort in her usual rifle-round pendant and found it missing. _Right. _She scratched at the exposed skin of her neck instead. "So… you knew everything?"

"I know everything," he confirmed.

Alice couldn't grasp the idea at all. "How? And how could you keep me from knowing?"

"Everything happened the best way it could, so that's not important now." His easy tone set Alice's blood on fire.

Alice slammed a hand down on the table. "The hell it's not!"

He frowned at her. "Calm down; there's no need to be emotional."

Alice sputtered. "No need to – do you have any idea what I just went through? What you just took from me?!"

"Of course I do," Cable replied slowly. "It was necessary."

"_Send me back_," she cried desperately, the strong front breaking to reveal a weeping heart.

Cable did not yield. "Not a chance in hell. You did your job, and now it's time for retirement."

Alice grabbed his arm as he approached. "_Please,_" she begged.

Cable's voice softened. "You know why I can't do that." His one eye seemed to be trying to tell her something; something like sympathy; something like regret.

Cable peeled her fingers from around his forearm. "You should take a shower. You smell like the bottom of the English Channel. We'll talk after." He passed her, closing the window behind Alice to keep the breeze out.

Alice barely managed a nod of confirmation as she stood, her head hanging low. The first trickles of despair had started to flow from a wounded place in her soul, pooling inside her skin just above the ankle. The water level rose with every wounded beat of her heart as the reality of her new situation took hold.

"I'll be right back," she murmured.

"Take your time," Cable replied.

The door clicked shut with a creak that stirred up the dust in Alice's memory. She cranked at a dial with a muscle memory that sputtered to start, but still managed to lurch into motion. Alice hissed in discomfort as the hot water scalded her freezing skin. When was the last time she'd taken a hot shower? Eight minutes ago? Eighteen months ago?

The shampoo smelled wrong. The conditioner smelled wrong. Her body wash smelled wrong. But they all smelled familiar. The curve of the tub under her bare feet felt familiar, but her feet arched away as much as they could. The pattering of water against the shower curtain as she rinsed out her hair was familiar background noise, but also sounded too much like distant gunfire. Alice shuddered, and it had nothing to do with the temperature of the water.

Alice scrubbed at her hair and her scalp and her skin with a fury reserved for a medical technician worried about hazardous waste. Her skin pinked and bled and stopped almost immediately, the rusty color sluicing away with ease.

The tank ran out of hot water and the water began to grow cold. Alice held out for another few minutes, trying to lose herself in the sensory static of a powerful shower. But it couldn't last forever. A cursory pass with a dry towel across wet skin and sopping hair was the only attempt she made before getting dressed in the random clothes she'd grabbed before the shower. Alice pulled a shirt followed by a sweater over her head and yanked on a pair of sweatpants. The fabric felt clingy and sticky on her skin in an alien way.

She stepped out of the bathroom, hair soaking into her shirt. "I hope you've thought out your story pretty well, because I've got questions." She shuffled slightly to her right, hoping to avoid stepping on the pile of wet clothes and belongings that she'd dropped outside of the bathroom before her shower.

But there was no pile at all.

Her pack was gone.

Her wet clothes from 1944 were gone.

"Cable?" Alice didn't need to spend much time searching her apartment – there weren't a lot of places for someone of his size to hide. There was a new addition to her table, however. A sheet of plain white paper fluttered gently in the breeze from a reopened window, pinned down at one corner by a porcelain mug.

_Kid,_ the letter began. Alice's hands started to shake and she had to sit down.

_You have questions, and I can't answer most of them. Xavier told me you were strong, and I think you should believe him. Forget what's past; there's no going back. There's a lot of future ahead of you._

He didn't need to sign the letter.

* * *

The five-hour drive to Westchester did nothing to ease the tension in Alice's shoulders. The letter sat in the passenger seat with her wallet – the only other item she'd remembered to grab as she fled Maryland in a fury. She knew the drive north quite well, and found familiar landmarks rounding every bend.

Gravel spit from beneath her tires as she pulled into the neat drive, sending the occasional _ping_ ringing beneath her feet. Alice wiped slightly sweaty hands on her jeans as she stepped out of the car, looking up at the building she'd once called home. _An age ago, _she thought to herself.

Her knuckles protested at the hard knock on ancient wood doors. She rubbed them with her other hand as she waited. _They might be away on a mission_, she thought as the moments grew into minutes. _I could have called_, Alice realized as she remembered that she had access to proper phones again. That thought tasted bitter. Alice shoved her hands into her pockets and turned away from the door just as it opened.

"Is that little Alice?" a fond voice greeted.

Alice spun on her heel, a friendly smile easily overcoming the scowl that had adhered to her face. "Not so little anymore, Blue."

Alice had always liked Hank, though his naivety left some observational skills to be desired. Nevertheless, he was a sight for sore eyes. "I can see that – come in, come in!" He beckoned with a furry blue hand for her to enter the school's foyer.

Alice clenched her hands around the fabric lining of her pockets, hoping for some stability that her stomach seemed to be lacking. "Thanks. Is the Professor here?"

"He sent me to let you in – come on; you can wait in his office. I think his class should wrap up in a few minutes." McCoy led the way down a series of familiar halls. Alice considered briefly telling him she remembered the way and didn't need an escort, but Hank seemed interested in chatting. "How are you, Alice? We haven't heard from you in quite some time."

"Uh, I'm alright," she responded with the acceptable social pleasantries. She was far from okay. She had driven up to Westchester on an impulsive decision to try to assign some blame for her suffering. Cable's letter had mentioned Xavier, and he kept a far more consistent address than the time-traveler.

Hank seemed appeased by her bland answer. "Well, you look great. Are you joining us for dinner? I'm sure everyone would be happy to see you."

Alice shrugged noncommittally. "Maybe."

Hank held Xavier's office door open for her and Alice murmured a soft thanks. He observed her nervous bobbing from side-to-side on the little square of carpet inside the office and his brow furrowed. "Alice, how are you?"

Alice glanced at him, flashing a neutral smile. "You already asked me – I'm alright."

Hank nodded. "It's just – I know things were… tense. Between you and Jean."

Alice's smile faltered; it wasn't that strong to begin with. "I'm not here about that."

Hank approached, his hands open is a placating gesture that Alice remembered all too well. "I mean to say we were all hoping that you could both just… put it behind you."

"Hank," Alice replied gently. "Now's not really a good time for that. Could you give me a minute?"

"Sure, Alice." He looked deflated.

"It's good to see you again, too," she added as a conciliatory afterthought. It seemed to help a little as Hank grinned just as the door clicked shut.

Alice stood just inside the office as a memory of a fear kept her from leaving the boundary of the carpet. She remembered that room quite well. She couldn't remember ever being in that room for any positive reason. Xavier had evidently accumulated a few other knick-knacks and photos in her absence, and pure curiosity drove her to investigate.

The school photos included children she didn't recognize, and adults she would have cared to forget. She remembered faces that poorly disguised judgement and scorn. She remembered a gut-wrenching loneliness that didn't match how crowded the school could become.

The air still smelled the same, she noticed. It smelled like someone had dusted maybe two weeks ago, but not since. It smelled like books you were discouraged from touching and oiled metal wheels.

Alice heard the motor of the wheelchair and the door creaking open before she heard the Professor's voice. "Alice, so good to see you again."

Alice turned slowly, clasping her arms behind her back. "I suppose you know already, but I just got back."

"I see." Xavier let the door close.

"And Cable left me a letter," she waved it lazily. "Did you know?" Alice asked, her voice far past bitter.

Xavier was taken aback by her tone. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me. You heard me and I'm sure you're in my head trying to figure out the context – _get the fuck out_," Alice hissed lethally. "Did you know what Cable was planning? Did you know what he knew?"

Xavier examined her, tapping his fingers contemplatively. "When Cable arrived at the school and asked for you, I wasn't sure what to think. He explained what would be asked of you, and how important it was that you not fully understand the entirety of the mission. I agreed."

Alice laughed. She sat back against the desk and crossed her arms over her chest, the laughter becoming a light, hysterical thing.

Xavier approached, his tone soothing. "Alice, I know how you must be feeling,"

Alice uncrossed her arms to grip the edge of the desk like a hawk grasping at a perch. "How? How _exactly _can you know what I'm feeling?"

He reached out to rest his hand on hers in some attempt at a comforting gesture. "You're _young_, Alice – this will all fade."

Alice withdrew her hand. "Charles, I'm twenty-eight years old. I traveled back in time to save one life and doom another. I stared death in the face and told him to go _fuck_ himself. I worked through gunfire and mortars and cut off limbs from men who _begged_ me to kill them. And I killed people without an ounce of regret."

Alice held his gaze, hoping he could feel the chasm of pain that opened in her chest as her thoughts shifted. "And I lost something precious when Cable brought me back." Alice could have wept if she had felt anything at all. "If he somehow described to you that all of this was going to happen, how could you let him do it, Charles?"

"Because he showed me that you had already done it. Cable showed me a photo – unmistakably you, Alice – from 1944." He looked patronizingly _proud_ of her. "And you did – with as much strength as I could ever have hoped would grow in you."

Alice collected herself. "I think I should go." She took the time to straighten her jacket, and check her pockets to make sure she still had her keys and wallet. All of this gave her time to tamp down on the bitter, sharp response that had burned on her tongue.

Instead, her voice was calm and level as she replied, walking towards the door. "You wanted me to be strong? I hate to be the one to ruin your dream, but I'm as broken on the inside as all of the rest of your students." She turned, hand still on the doorknob, to smile at Xavier. "But it's nice to know you're still the same old fool that I remember."

* * *

A/N:

It looks like I picked up some more readers just from this being posted on the Avengers tag. Hello! Welcome to your new personal emotional hell!

Alice doesn't have anyone who can relate to her experiences. To Alice, she just spent a year and a half in an insanely stressful time period and lost Bucky. To everyone else, Alice went from a relatively easy person to deal with to a strong-willed an (in their opinion) obstinate and hysterical ninny. For them, nothing changed except Alice. For Alice, everything changed.

Theme song for this chapter: Il bell'Antonio, Tema III by Giovanni Sollima – Yo-Yo Ma & Kathryn Stott

A few guest questions:

**Are you going straight into TWS**?

No – Alice has a little reconciling to do, and a new friend to make first. She needs to come to terms (as best she can) with being removed from 1944 before she was ready.

**How did Cable know to pick up Alice there if she wasn't wearing the beacon?**

See above chapter.

**Is Steve and/or Bucky going to recognize Alice if/when they meet again?**

Well, I can tell you that when [REDACTED] meets up with [REDACTED] at [REDACTED], [REDACTED] will [WHO ARE YOU KIDDING THIS IS REDACTED].

**What does it mean that Bucky remembers Alice's voice**?

It means that my readers have no patience for plot points, but I love when they ask anyway because it means they're paying attention.

**What's your updating schedule for RITD?**

I won't post a chapter until I'm finished writing the chapter that comes after the one I'm posting, so your guess is as good as mine, buddy. I tend to write more when I'm traveling for work, and my next work trip starts March 26. When I'm traveling I can sometimes post four chapters in a week. Once per month when I'm home is also normal. I'm also working on a YYH story, so my attention is split.

**Hey, I think I figured out some subtext in your story, am I right?**

Message me and find out! There's a lot of stuff that's limited to subtext because explaining it out entirely would suck, but does explain some motivations.

I love my reviewers! : Kittywoof, TimeLordsRule, Sanguinary Tide, QueenOfCloud, TikiKiki, SomebodyWhoCares, Mia, Silvia, Emmarichalar, SunnySides, TastelessHooligans, Lu Mach, and Lucy Jacob!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	4. The Swan

**CONTENT WARNING: PTSD, SUICIDE, GROSS BODY JUNK**

* * *

Alice remembered somewhere halfway through New Jersey that she'd always hated driving on Interstate 95. The Turnpike's drab, monotonous landscape had a tendency to put drivers to sleep at worst, and snippily bored at best. She took a wide detour through Pennsylvania but it didn't help much; she'd traded blurry gray landscape for green and a lower speed limit.

Alice needed something more engaging to occupy her thoughts. The bitter feelings swirling and growing in her stomach on the drive North prevented her from focusing on her losses, but once those wilted away she could find only a specter of grief waiting patiently in the empty space that remained.

So Alice focused instead on trying to adjust to her new surroundings. The inside of her car was so silent comparted to riding in an ancient Jeep or on horseback. Her left foot tapped idly against the rest in the foot-well with no better outlet for her energy. She kept getting distracted by the myriad of buttons and switches at her disposal, and only remembered that she had a radio music option as she neared the Maryland State line.

The radio's life was short-lived; maybe two minutes into the assault on her hearing, Alice turned the radio off again. It had been a song she'd once liked, but now it just felt at once nostalgic and also somehow a mocking reminder of her place in time.

_I need cereal_, she thought as she crossed into Maryland, firmly directing her attention away again. She pulled off the highway in a familiar stretch and ended up triple-parked at the back of the parking lot as she utterly failed in an attempt to give a shit. Flatly ignoring a dark look from a soccer mom, Alice patted her pockets to make sure she'd remembered to grab her wallet from the passenger seat but still managed to forget to lock the car.

Alice wandered through the store for a few minutes before remembering she needed a cart. _Probably need more than just cereal_. It moved smoothly when going straight, but at the first turn down an aisle made a godawful _screech_ of metal on metal that set Alice's nerves on edge.

She stood in the center of the aisle, the colorful boxes assaulting her eyes with their vibrancy. Alice remembered she used to have a favorite, but at that moment couldn't remember exactly what it was. She remembered it being a fairly bland cereal, as modern ones went. It had a funny name, something she had chosen as a young child for being cute, and now just continued to buy out of habit.

_Attention shoppers,_ a chipper voice crackled over the intercom, making Alice jump. _Our super-saver-coupon hour is coming to an end! To take full advantage, don't forget to scan your super-saver-member card!_

Alice rolled her shoulders, trying to shake the odd kink that had developed between her shoulder blades. She ran a hand through her hair, pulling at a tangle that had developed just below her ponytail. She played with the tail and tugged at it distractedly. _What was the name of it_, she wracked her brain. _I used to buy it every week, I should know this_.

The intercom crackled and whined above the aisles and a small child shrieked in the next aisle, ramping up to a tantrum. _Attention shoppers_, came the chipper voice_, please excuse the mess in aisle five._

The kink between Alice's shoulders sang like a knife in the back. She rolled her shoulders but it did no good. She rolled her head on her neck as the pain crept upwards. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the harsh lights and the vibrant colors and the sudden sounds. Her breathing came in unsteady bursts. Her nose flared, her senses overwhelmed with an antiseptic, lemony scent.

_Attention shoppers, _came the chipper voice of God,_ take shelter, Aisle five; mortars incoming!_ A startled warning cry rallied the men at the top of the aisle, waving frantic arms to gather them in the safety of the meat department's trenches. She could taste the fear, she could hear the shrieking whine of the incoming mortar. Alice watched as the soldiers ran by, pushing the slow and the injured to move, move, _move or else you're dead_.

A mouth opened in front of Alice, blood pouring out as he asked: "Ma'am, are you finding everything okay?" Alice blinked, and she was staring at cereal again. A red-polo-shirted store associate was standing a few steps away, pushing a cart of cardboard boxes. "Ma'am?" he asked again.

"I'm fine, thanks." She stumbled over the words, and they came out in a garbled "Hmfinthanks." The store associate frowned as Alice rushed past them, abandoning her cart of groceries in the middle of the aisle as she fled the store.

_I'm fine_. The voice in her head sounded too much like Bucky's, and she choked on the thought. That dangerous feeling that tasted like fear and looked like living in grayscale dragged her towards the pit of grief that had settled below her heart.

Alice would have beat her hands against the steering wheel if she'd had the energy. She would have screamed her frustration and her sudden loneliness and gaping wounds of pain if she'd had the will. Instead, she sat in the driver's seat with her hands clenched in her lap, trying to keep her head above water.

She'd just seen him – two weeks ago, eight minutes ago, seventy years ago – but she could still feel his hands on her face, still hear the way he called her name. She could see his face, and with his face came others.

Dum Dum.

Morita.

Jones.

Monty.

Dernier.

Steve.

Gloria.

Ingrid.

Joanna.

Thompson.

Cookie.

Dr. Fletcher.

And a hundred other soldiers whose names and faces had strolled past her with familiar smiles every day.

She knew their secrets, their dreams, their hopes, and fears; how had she ever been so naïve as to believe she would be able to leave them so easily? How could she have dared to presume it would be so simple to make a place for herself back in time without becoming attached? How could she have known that, for all her lies and deception, those people would become a part of her heart and soul?

Now it was time for Alice to scream; to beat her hands against the steering wheel as the car honked in protest; to roar with anguish until her throat cracked and her eyes ran dry and her soul ran empty.

And her soul ran empty.

Alice turned the engine over smoothly and pulled out of the parking lot.

She drove home – accidentally missing her street the first time – and parked the car in front of the barn. Her breathing had steadied enough to settle her heart into a familiar rhythm, though her soul remained empty.

She walked up the narrow stairs to her apartment over the barn and unlocked the door. Alice wished that her apartment had generated some kind of dust layer in her absence; something to represent the long journey she'd abandoned her future to shoulder.

She opened the window, allowing her cat, Julian, to come and go as he pleased. Alice took a deep breath of the late spring breeze, letting the air pull the antiseptic smell from her senses.

She opened the locked drawer of her desk and took out the pistol she'd bought to practice, and carefully slid a bullet into the chamber.

Alice walked to the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

She stepped into the tub, fully clothed, and leaned back against the cold porcelain.

Her head tapped against the tile surround and settled into a tiny mortared gap between two tiles.

Alice disliked the taste of steel and the way her teeth clacked against the barrel of her pistol, but she couldn't really taste anything at that moment.

_Happy Shapes_, she remembered right before she pulled the trigger. _The cereal was called Happy Shapes._

It was an unusual last thought.

* * *

_Whose woods are these I think I know.  
His house is in the village though;  
He will not see me stopping here  
to watch his woods fill up with snow._

_My little horse must think it queer  
To stop without a farmhouse near  
Between the woods and frozen lake  
The darkest evening of the year._

_He gives his harness bells a shake  
To ask if there is some mistake.  
The only other sound's the sweep  
Of east wind and downy flake._

_The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
But I have promises to keep,  
And miles to go before I sleep,  
And miles to go before I sleep._

* * *

Alice opened her eyes.

Her brow winkled in confusion as she focused on the tile surround of her bathtub, and the fine mist of blood decorating around her head like a messy halo.

Her sense of smell alerted her to a truly horrific odor in the room; all kinds of bodily fluids and excretions and blood and _death_. She gagged, covering her mouth with a hand that slid against a dropped pistol.

Alice's mouth was dry – drier than falling asleep on a train and waking up two hours later and tasted like something had grown, lived, and died there.

The tub around her felt slippery and _squishy_ like old, forgotten foods at the bottom of the fridge.

Alice's limbs were slow to respond as she tried to stand, her feet slipping along the evidence of her death – the last bladder contents, intestinal contents, and whatever blood and brain matter she'd blown out of her head.

Slimy hands grabbed at towels, trying to clear crusty remnants from her skin but they'd dried in place days ago. She reached over the side of the tub and turned the spigot on, letting it get scorchingly hot as she wetted a washcloth. The sound of the water covered up the wracking sobs that shook her deeply.

The evidence of her failure slipped down the sides of the tub, sluicing away under the high-pressure showerhead and slithering towards the metal drain. With the majority collecting in slurry near the drain, Alice stripped out of her ruined clothes, peeling them away with a force hard enough to rip seams.

She stood under the water, her eyes pressed firmly shut as she willed the water to beat through her head like so many bullets; that if one bullet didn't do the trick, maybe a thousand followed by a thousand would be enough to erase the agony she was being forced to live through.

Alice could now understand why Wolverine was always so grumpy and completely sympathized. Whatever changes her mutation had developed while she was in 1943 cemented her in place in the _here and now_ of eight minutes later, seventy years later. There'd be no last recourse of opting out of her life, and there'd be no choice not to _be_.

Alice's shower started to run cold, and she blinked through the running water to reach for the controls. Her vision was distracted as something shiny glimmered from the muck doing its best to clog her drain, like a fish dancing along the underside of the water's surface.

She crouched low to run her fingers through the mess expelled by her insides and found a cold, hard, metallic shape trapped there. She lifted it with cupped hands to rinse it in the cold spray from the shower.

A copper oblong shape appeared there, so familiar it made her heart leap.

_Alice Shaw_

She held it close to her face, not daring to breathe.

_Alice Shaw,_ the bullet named her.

Swallowed in desperation as she pulled it from the shell and its life-saving gunpowder, the bullet had returned.

Alice clutched it to her chest, hands caged around it as tight as she could manage as her tears returned.

_Alice Shaw,_ the bullet vowed, _you will survive._

* * *

A/N:

Chapter's theme music: Carnival of the Animals XIII. The Swan(I prefer the YoYo Ma version).

Alice's newly accelerated healing factor said no.

And in this chapter, I learned that if you Google "methods of suicide" the first several results are the National Suicide Hotline. Cue me grumbling at my computer that "I'm a writer, it's cool," even as I appreciate that Google is worried about me.

I also have the hardest time thinking that, when I first started WIAS, this was a Steve/OC story. I'm so glad that changed.

**Guest Questions**:

**What do you do that involves so** much** travel?**

I'm an engineering inspector! I go around the US and tell people they're wrong, mostly. This involves a lot of flying and staying at hotels, and trying not to die of boredom gives me lots of time to write nights and weekends. Hooray for you!

**Why is Cable such an ass and took all of her stuff?**

There's been some hinting if you read between the lines about what Cable may or may not have known about Alice. It's super subtle, and I may come back to it at the end of RITD if I feel it adds a nice bow on top.

* * *

**I love my reviewers!** SabakuNoGaara426, Sanguinary Tide, Kittywoof, SunnySides, TimeLordsRule, TikiKiki, Sakuya06, Nekokairi, SomebodyWhoCares, QueenOfCloud, TrilbyBard, Bee, and bananaraberrybat!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	5. Friends Like These

**2014, Maryland  
Very early in the morning, or very late at night.**

Sam Wilson hesitated in the door of the pub, his eyes searching from face to face. The bartender caught his eye and nodded towards the far end of the bar where a blonde head was laying on the polished wood surface. Sam waved his thanks as he passed and the older man shrugged it off.

"Hey, girl – Chuck called me. You ready to go home?" he asked as he sat on the stool next to the severely inebriated woman. One eye opened blearily to glare at him, but the expression warmed slowly as recognition overrode irritation.

"Chuckles won't let me drive home," Alice grumbled into the wood. An empty bottle of bourbon and a single glass sat next to her head on the table. Sam didn't need to ask if Alice had downed the bottle by herself – past experience told him she had.

Sam slid the empty bottle away from Alice to be cleaned up by the quiet bartender. "I can't imagine why."

Alice mumbled something incomprehensible and tried to stand. She wobbled on her feet dangerously so Sam grabbed an arm. "You know you should really tell me when you're gonna drink like this; I'm happy to keep you company. That way I don't miss out on the fun _and_ have to drive you home."

Alice's head jerked from side to side. "I got this," she protested. "'sides," she mumbled, "gotta try harder if I don't…" she trailed off. She blinked heavily, some clarity returning to her eyes that faded as she stood. "Doesn't last long. Gotta keep up." She teetered unsteadily on her feet and grasped Sam's shoulder for balance.

He put a hand over hers to keep it on his shoulder as he started to lead her out of the bar. "Well let's get you home, Brunhilda." Alice grumbled darkly at the nickname.

"Byeeee, Chuckles!" she waved enthusiastically at the owner as she wobbled her way to the door, and he gave a nonchalant wave back, locking the door behind the odd pair. Sam led her over to his car. They'd be back for Alice's car in the morning – the bartender was familiar with the white SUV; it wouldn't be towed.

Sam buckled her into the seat as she continued to mumble to herself. She was crying. "Couldn't… couldn't save 'em, Sam…" her hiccupping got worse as she shuddered. "Bombs 'n trains 'n guns… always the guns…" She looked up at Sam. "I hate war."

Sam nodded sagely. "Me too, honey."

"Not honey," she snapped drunkenly. "It's Ma'am… or _Lieutenant_..."

"Oh – it's Lieutenant now?" Sam laughed. "When were you in the military, _Lieutenant_?"

Alice paused, seeming to realize she had said something strange. "I… whoopsies."

"That's what I thought – you warn me if you're going to hurl; I just got this thing cleaned."

"Yessir," Alice saluted sloppily. "Where'sthebourbon?"

"No more bourbon; you drank it all."

"Noooooo…" Alice whined. "I'm not ready yet…" She rubbed at her face and it seemed to sober her up a little. "Sleep instead?" Alice laid down along the backseat, stretching her arms across the furthest seat as if looking for a pillow to grasp.

"Sure; get some sleep and we'll get you all tucked in at home." She was clearly asleep before Sam finished speaking, and he shook his head bemusedly.

Alice Sigynsdottir was a funny duck. He'd nearly run her over about a year prior as she was hanging flyers on the announcement board outside the group room of the VA. An explosion of papers had flown out of her arms as he startled her, followed by a series of apologies from both parties.

It hadn't been a week before Sam ventured out to the farm on her flyers, curious about what they had to offer – for _free_, it claimed. _A place to set aside your thoughts and come into the peace of wild things. _Alice's farm took in horses that were about to be euthanized for behavioral problems and let the veterans care for them.

Sam had asked her, one afternoon while she walked through the barn checking on horse and human alike, "_why?_"

"_Why what?"_ she'd replied.

"_You're not a veteran or a soldier, don't have veterans in the family – why do this?"_ he'd clarified the question, knowing full well she didn't need it.

She'd shrugged. _"Resurrection."_

He'd stopped. _"What?"_

"_Right?"_ she'd replied. _"Doesn't make any sense to me, either."_

An odd duck for sure. Whatever secret reason she held close to her chest remained tightly locked away, even with the reaching effects it seemed to have on her life. She seemed to feel the hurt of the world in a deep and passionate way that most of humanity had long ago learned to shut out in self-preservation.

She'd become a fixture at the VA as well as a regular visitor at Sam's home. Alice was the friend he could call at two in the morning after a night terror, knowing she'd also be awake. Alice was the friend who would appear at his door with pizza and some complaint about the traffic but no mention of the hour, or she'd leave open the seat at the café that allowed Sam to keep watch over the crowd as his instincts demanded, and wouldn't comment if he flinched at loud noises – maybe because she flinched as well.

Sam pulled off the main road onto Alice's gravel driveway, navigating easily around low spots in the long tour around the hill that dipped down into Alice's valley. _Foxhole Barns_, the welcome sign read as the nearly-new residence came into view.

The slowly warming sky cast an eerie light over the large barn and the attached residence, Alice's office on the lower floor and her expansive home upstairs. The early light was mimicked by the bed of flowers threatening to take over the driveway; a carpet of dancing orange starting to open delicate petals to meet the morning.

The plants fluttered in the breeze thrown by Sam's car as he pulled around the circle and parked. The interior lights blinked on as he opened his door and walked around to let Alice out. "Alright, _Lieutenant_; let's get you to bed."

"Sam," Alice whined, "Sam, Sam, Sam," she repeated, allowing him to tug her up by her arms and haul her to her feet on the gravel. "I want to go, too."

"Yeah?" he asked, wrapping an arm around her shoulders for her balance. He had tried her waist once and nearly lost a hand. "Go where?"

"Yeah," she sounded sad. "I wanted to go; thought it might… look like London did."

"London will be there in the morning," Sam told her as he half-carried her up the stairs.

"You think so?" she asked hopefully. Alice's cat wound unhelpfully around their ankles, meowing demandingly as Sam opened her front door. Alice shooed him away with promises of breakfast later. She flopped over on her bed, groaning in complaint as Sam pulled her shoes off.

"Get some rest, Al," Sam ordered.

"Not the boss'f me…" Alice mumbled, already half asleep.

Sam pulled the curtains shut to block out the early morning light, and closed her bedroom door behind him. Alice had a comfortable couch he'd gotten to know quite well during their friendship. For all the valor and kindness she exuded when helping others, her secrets were killing her on the inside. She was trying to drown them – the signs were all there – and was somehow staying on the living side of near-alcoholism.

Sam had hinted that she was welcome at group – she knew all of the attendees already – and she'd changed the topic of conversation entirely without even trying to hide the switch. Sam had been worried that she'd cut communication just for suggesting it, but then he'd gotten the call from the bartender. "_Got an Alice Sig… segen… sigens-dot… whatever it is – she's too drunk to drive and gave me this number. Come get her or she's going to the drunk tank."_

It had been the first of many.

Sam went every time.

* * *

The soft sounds of socks on hardwood and the _clink-clink_ of dishware helped stir Sam from his light sleep. He stretched as he sat up, one of Alice's many heavy blankets falling off his lap and onto the floor.

"Good morning – how're you feeling?" he asked around a yawn. He only had to sit up to see Alice shuffling around her kitchen – much of her home was a big, open floorplan that left the living room and kitchen easily accessible.

"Bit of a hangover," Alice replied, scooping grounds into her coffee machine and poking it into motion. "Did I say anything weird last night? I feel like I may have said something weird."

"Well, you told me to call you _Lieutenant_," he teased, crossing his arms on the back of the sofa and resting his chin on his arms. Julian jumped up into the lap – open lap on the sofa was the cat's territory, after all – and curled up into a happy, purring sphere.

"Yeah, that would be pretty strange." Alice laughed awkwardly, turning away to grab clean mugs from a cabinet. "Cream with your coffee, Sam?"

"Please, but keep that horrible honey out of my cup," he threatened, picking Alice's cat out of his lap to make sure the little woman didn't ignore him.

"What?" Alice asked innocently. "You mean this?" She held up the little black jar of honey that _definitely_ didn't taste right.

"Yes, I mean _that_ nasty thing!" He snatched it out of her hand and put it on a shelf high above her reach.

"Hey! Manuka honey is good for you!"

"Yeah, it tastes like it too."

Alice rolled her eyes as she handed Sam his honey-free cup and grabbed two muffins from her breadbox. Sam stole the chocolate one. "So," Alice started, peeling the paper wrapped away from her carbohydrate overload. "What would you say if I told you I was thinking of moving?"

"Where?" Sam asked between sips of coffee.

Alice's face lost some of the relaxed ease she usually carried. "California." The tightness of her jaw and the concern in her eyes wasn't new, but it was more out in the open than usual.

"Yeah?" Sam asked, restraining the urge to press her for details.

She shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. I just… it's different. You know?" She played with a thin silver chain around her neck, and Sam could hear the faint clicking of a pendant rolling along the chain, muffled by the thick material of her sweater. Alice's bad habit; playing with her necklace. She only ever wore the one – as far as he knew, anyway; the pendant was always tucked away under her shirt – playing with gold chain at any given moment.

A large elephant sauntered into the room and sat down at the table, joining Alice and Sam for coffee. It wore a sign around its neck that read _Secrets_.

Sam leaned back in his chair, appraising the smaller woman. "You do whatever you need to do in order to be happy, Alice. But know that I'm here if you need to talk."

Alice made a scrunched face. "Ugh, talking; gross." But her face said _thank you._

"Come on," he started, finishing his coffee with a draining swig, "Let's go get your car before Chuck has it towed. You know," Sam drawled, standing with a stretch, "you should come running with me in the mornings. Really clear your head."

Alice followed his lead, grabbing her wallet from the edge of the counter and shoving it into her back pocket. "Hmm, getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to run in a circle around the National Mall, then drive home in the middle of rush hour? How about no thanks?"

"Offer stands."

"Get out of my house, Wilson."

"I'm your _ride,_ Al."

* * *

A/N: I guess mild alcohol abuse is a step up from suicidal behavior? Alice can't technically _get_ addicted because of her healing factor, and she has to pretty much drink constantly if she wants to stay inebriated, but when she does drink it's nice for her to forget for an hour or so.

I love Sam and Alice's friendship so much. Somehow they're both the sassy friend. Alice's friendship with Sam is going to be relevant throughout RITD, so this isn't just a throwaway chapter – promise.

* * *

**Guest Questions:**

**Where is BUCKY YOU MONSTER?**

Shhhhhh my darlings. Sooooon. Have like…. 1% more patience. Reunions aren't cathartic unless they're earned.

**Is there significance in Alice's back pain in The Swan?**

So for me personally, my disassociating episodes usually start as physical discomfort and escalate from there. For once, don't read too much into it.

* * *

I LOVE MY REVIEWERS: TikiKiki, SunnySides, TastelessHooligans, SanguinaryTide, Bee (Guest), Guest, KannaKyomu

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	6. Like a Bullet

Early evening's light stretched long fingers across the Valley of Foxhole Barns, tickling the warm petals of Alice's flower garden and running through the manes of several horses too energetic to be drawn into the barn by the promise of new hay. Alice leaned against forearms propped up on the white fence, a glass of amber, nearly empty, resting casually in one palm. She tipped the glass from side to side, watching it capture the light and trap it in a glittering dance.

"Miss Alice? You need anything else before I head out?" Alice lifted her head as the farm hand called for her.

She squinted against the light and shook her head, barely able to make out her dark-haired friend, backlit by the setting sun. "No, Stan – I can get everyone in on my own. Say hi to Moira for me."

He waved a hand and grabbed his sweatshirt from a hook next to the barn door. "Yes ma'am – see you Monday!"

Whatever buzz Alice had been trying to maintain with the bourbon faded as Alice drained the glass. She didn't particularly enjoy the taste, or the sensation of being drunk, but she did enjoy not thinking. She enjoyed the silence that it poured inside her, filling the pit of grief with a peaceful _nothing_.

Alice traded her decanter for a feed pitcher, scooping out a hefty portion of sweet feed to lure in her more tempestuous charges. She wasn't above bribery, and it didn't hurt that her face meant yummy treats to the horses – she almost never got bit or kicked.

Alice started as her phone vibrated violently in her pocket, nearly dropping the feed. No matter how long she'd been 'back', she just wasn't used to cellular phones; much preferring to just show up wherever she wanted to be.

The caller ID flashed Sam's name, and Alice took a short steadying breath before picking up. "Yeah, Sam?"

"_Hey Al – you'll never guess who I met on my run this morning,"_ Sam sounded so damn proud of himself.

Alice tucked the phone in the crook of her neck and crouched to gather the handful of feed she'd dropped on the floor. "Not to step on your moment, but can it wait until the weekend? I'm a little busy at the moment."

"_Sure – you okay?"_

"I'm fine; just trying to get the horses in before dark," Alice deflected

"_Gotcha – see you Sunday."_

"Bye, Sam."

"_Later."_ He hung up, and Alice set the phone on the edge of the feed bin. She'd come back for it later, she reasoned; it wouldn't help her rapport with the horses if she jumped while trying to calm them down.

Alice worked her way through a short series of gates to the main pasture, clucking her tongue and shaking the pitcher to get the horses' attention. She enjoyed the rumbling of thunderous hooves she could feel through the earth; grounding her, summoning her.

Sometimes a call or an afternoon with Sam could ground her; remind her that she needed to make a little effort to continue living in the proper time. Sometimes her time with Sam reminded her too strongly of what she'd lost. The days she didn't have a reasonable explanation for her short temper or distant nature.

Alice had broken down and cried as the Incident aired on live television. She'd been with Sam enjoying an afternoon away from the farm when the strength had gone out of her limbs and the chasm of grief grew arms and dragged her down. Her grief looked like fear and shock on the surface – both reasonable reactions – though Alice could not have cared less for the nightmares raining from a void in New York's skyline.

A flicker of a face, of a stature that commanded respect, and mention of a name that sent Alice spiraling. _Captain America, _the caption confirmed what Alice's racing heart already knew. _I've got to go_, she'd murmured over and over, even as Sam bundled her into his car. _I've got to go,_ she repeated as she followed Sam into the VA; gathering to watch the news with veterans who, collectively, didn't know where else to go.

Her face may have reflected the shock and confusion of the crowd, but her grief was her own. Cable had told her that Steve would be waking not long after she got back, but a large part of her had believed she would never see him again. Through the lens of a news camera it still felt surreal; like she was being mocked by time. _See this? You can't have this. You abandoned this._

And time flew by. The Incident passed and no one cared to put Steve's face on the news anymore. Alice returned to her Foxhole and her horses and her sunsets. She'd gone to Steve's exhibit in DC and tried to find some answers. She found grief, wearing Bucky's face, waiting in the turning halls and flickering film. She stopped trying after that.

The horses surrounded Alice, nudging and shoving each other with wide bodies to get first crack at the sweet feed, knocking Alice out of her drifting reverie. "Hey now," she chided the horses, "play nice." Alice used the treat to lure the horses into the barn, locking them out of the pasture for the night. They retreated to their individual stalls with a little more grace and a few more bribes.

Alice switched the barn's lighting to the dimmer tones, bidding them all goodnight with a whisper and a wave. Alice's least favorite part of the day hit as she ascended the stairs to her apartment over the office; she kicked off her shoes, grabbed piece of fruit from the bowl on the counter, and sat down at her table.

The crushing emptiness of Alice's world sat across from her.

Julian wound around her ankles asking for a scratch behind the ears.

Alice complied idly.

The emptiness, whose name could also be Grief, lifted empty eyes to meet hers as she stared blankly across the room.

Alice pulled at the gold chain around her neck until she withdrew the bullet from its place beneath her sweater. She rolled the copper bullet between her fingers, letting the chain chime merrily against its sides.

_I can't do this_, she thought, _living._

_Alice Shaw_, the bullet replied.

_It's too painful,_ she thought.

_Alice Shaw_, the bullet insisted.

Alice moved to her sofa, laying down and pulling a blanket over her legs. She preferred the sofa to the bed – the hard, overstuffed monstrosity was just so much closer to sleeping on the ground than her bed could ever be again. She kept the bullet clenched tightly in one hand, feeling the edges of the inscription press against her palm.

_Alice Shaw_, the bullet soothed.

If she closed her eyes, Alice could almost hear it. Time had begun to claw away at the sharper parts of her memory, but she could still hear his voice. It had taken her certainty about the feeling of his hands on hers. Time had taken the exact color of his eyes. Time had taken her tears but had left her his voice. _Don't you dare die, Alice._

In a few hours she would wake up, make coffee, and start the cycle of her day all over again. Not like she could make it stop, but Alice did her best to work through her days with something resembling dignity. She sat at the bottom of her well of grief, waiting to drown even though all the tears and all the water had dried up years ago.

* * *

The Soldier sat in near-total darkness as Commander approached down the hall. A sidearm was presented on the table for Commander, should he choose to eliminate his Asset. The presentation of arms, however symbolic, left the Soldier on nearly equal footing, though with his heightened reflexes he could easily reach the pistol first.

Commander retrieved a carton from the fridge, finally noticing the Soldier's presence at the table.

"I'm going to go, Mr. Pierce. You need anything before I leave?" a woman's voice called around the corner.

"No. Uh… it's fine, Renata, you can go home." Commander's eyes flickered away briefly. _Weakness_, the Soldier thought. _Distracted._

"Okay, night-night."

"Good night." Commander waited until the front door clicked shut before addressing the Soldier. "Want some milk?" he asked. The Soldier did not reply; he was familiar with that trap. "The timetable has moved. Our window it limited. Two targets, Level Six." Commander poured himself a glass and joined the Soldier at the table, eyeing the pistol briefly. "They already cost me Zola. I want confirmed death in ten hours."

A gasp caught the Soldier's attention. "Sorry, Mr. Pierce, I… I forgot my phone." Commander's housekeeper had returned.

Commander sighed lightly. "Oh, Renata. I wish you would have knocked." Commander grabbed the pistol and the Soldier felt the barest flicker of fear stir in his stomach. _Is it time, _he thought, _is this the end? _But Commander shot the intruder instead.

_Breathe_, the voice encouraged. It rolled around like a calming wave, smoothing down the quakes along the bare soil of his mind. _He's not dangerous_, the voice insisted.

A tiny seed of a thought sprouted along the never-ending expanse of bare soil; the first of many to come, but thankfully not confusing as they could so often be. _That depends on your definition of 'dangerous'_, the Soldier thought. The voice chuckled, and agreed.

Commander returned his attention to the Soldier, who straightened slightly in his chair. "Confirm command," he barked.

"Two targets, Level Six; confirm death within ten hours. Command confirmed," The Soldier offered quietly.

Commander nodded, seemingly satisfied, and returned the Soldier's pistol to the table. The Soldier's fingers twitched as if to reach for it; needing to remove the threat to his life from the table and return it to the proper holster.

_Not yet_, the voice stopped him. The Soldier stilled his hands.

Commander's eyes searched the Soldier's face and he frowned, seemingly displeased. He tapped his finger thoughtfully on the table. The Soldier waited. "Dismissed," Commander barked. "And get rid of that," he gestured to the body in the middle of the living room.

The Soldier swiftly retrieved his pistol, holstered it, and stood while managing to avoid the brief screech of chair legs on tile that normal people had such difficulty preventing.

_Good_, the voice praised where Commander had not. Unnecessary noise was often met with reprimand, he had learned. The voice encouraged and remembered and steadied where Commanders did not, from void to stabilization through the end of missions too far back to remember without the luxury of time.

The housekeeper's body was of no significant burden. The voice was silent on the matter.

Out the back of Commander's home a black van waited for him. The rear doors opened and the Soldier stepped inside without hesitation, dumping the body between the benches and taking a seat on the long bench directly behind the driver and pointedly ignoring the nervous glances the other soldiers sent in his direction.

_Weak_, the Soldier thought.

_Frightened,_ the voice corrected. Her voice was more present when he didn't need to focus on Commander's instructions or the more physical aspects of a mission. It helped to remind him that he was not in the place-between-time; the void. The dark. The cold.

The Soldier counted his rounds as the vehicle rolled away, metal fingers scraping against the metal bullets. _Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine…_ his mind glitched as he held the fortieth round, his hand shaking slightly. Why wasn't he supposed to have forty rounds? The Soldier's confusion tasted like raw mint in his mouth, and he bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood instead.

He slipped the last bullet into the magazine.

_Click._

The Soldier was fully aware of the multiple weapons casually pointed in his direction. He had little doubt that if he shifted in his seat several safeties would be clicked to 'off'. The Soldier took a flash of sadistic pleasure in counting and re-counting his rounds to the extensive discomfort of those around him.

_Oh stop,_ the voice chastised lightly – far gentler than Commander would have been. _That's not necessary. _His hands stopped moving immediately, and the voice had to remind him to at least finish what he was doing.

_Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine… _he paused again.

_Click_. The fortieth bullet locked in the magazine as smoothly as all those before it.

The Soldier was more aware of the voice when it was absent – combat, mission updates, commands – in the same way he could feel the change of weight in his weapons after they fired. But during those times, he couldn't remember what the voice was or what it sounded like; it was like looking around a room for a place to sit without knowing what a chair is. It was just a continuation of the emptiness in his head.

But as the terror would seize his chest when he was due for re-stabilization, or confusion sprouted, there it would be; commanding him to _breathe_. If he tried to focus on it, to identify it as male or female or even to give it a name, his head would ache and the voice would grow fuzzy and indistinct. Like the fortieth bullet. Like the flicker of motion aimed at self-preservation against commands. A _wrongness_ that beat against the inside of his head.

_Breathe_. The voice encouraged as his confusion began to distract.

The Soldier complied.

* * *

A/N: Exposition, exposition, exposition.

Writing canon compliant is the worst. I hate reading scripts for dialogue. WHooo writing Alice's bit here was hard. We're in Alice's head quite a lot for Act I of RITD, and I'm Doing My Best to make her more than just a Tortured Character ™, but someone really trying to work around their grief.

But hey! It's Bucky!

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW probably not tbh y'all want something sweet and reunion-y

I'm shocked no one picked up on the name of Alice's farm. Foxhole Barns. Foxhole, Barnes.

* * *

**Questions:**

**Is she really moving to CA?**

Nah. California is really symbolic for Alice of a time when she was happy, but she'd only leave the Barns for something really big.

**Did Alice's name change?**

Alice Shaw was just an alias for 1943. Her birth name is Alice Sigynsdottir.

**What kind of time jump are we looking at now?**

Alice went back to 1943 right before Steve was thawed, so like… 2010. TWS is 2014, I think. So like 4 years. Alice has well-nailed down her coping mechanisms.

**Why do you torture us like this?**

Because I love you. And if I have to suffer with all of this in my head, so do you.

**Are we ever going to get more of Alice's backstory?**

Maybe? I've written some in the past but ended up deleting it during editing. It adds a lot of clunky exposition that just feels… bleh.

* * *

I LOVE my reviewers! Lucy Jacob, TimeLordsRule, TikiKiki, PistolHattersButtercup, SunnySides, Bee (guest), Sanguinary Tide, ghost. of. the. night. 99, and SabakuNoGaara426

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	7. California Poppies

Something had happened to the world while Steve slept in the ice.

_EXO-7 FALCON_

_Black Widow_

_Iron Man_

The world sprouted extraordinary people at every turn, but extraordinary meant something different now.

_Whiplash_

_Loki_

_War Machine_

It used to be that being extraordinary was earned over a lifetime; by laying down your life for brothers-in-arms, or making better the lives of thousands. But now, being extraordinary was inextricably tied to violence; to wars foreign… and domestic.

_Pierce_

_Sitwell_

_Fury_

A saving grace for the future could be that, with the new kind of extraordinary, a new form of bravery had emerged. A man, maybe thousands more like him, who would walk back into the fire when summoned. Who risked his life and livelihood to answer the call.

"Now'd be a good time to cover up," Sam tossed Steve a baseball cap as he pulled his car out of the garage, and Natasha pulled up the hood on her jacket.

"Thanks again for doing this," Steve said as he tugged the blue cap over his hair.

"Don't mention it, man. We should take back roads as far as we can –stay away from traffic cameras as long as possible." Sam seemed to pause mid-thought, and flicked his turn signal on before making a fairly abrupt turn.

"Change your mind already?" Natasha asked.

Sam shifted in his seat to pull his cellphone from his back pocket. "I've got a friend who shares a property line with Fort Meade. It'd make getting in a hell of a lot easier."

Steve and Natasha shared a skeptical look. They were understandably apprehensive about adding yet another person to the growing list of those involved. Sam glanced at Steve and correctly read the trepidation. "She's good people." The confidence in Sam's face spoke wonders. "If I ever needed someone to keep a secret, it'd be her."

"You should have told me you were off the market, Sam," Natasha crooned with a smirk.

Sam laughed as he glanced briefly at his phone to bring up the right number and held it to his ear. "I'm still on the market, baby." He made another turn as the phone rang, and a robotic voice answered '_the number you have dialed is not available, leave a message at the tone'. _

Sam sighed as he waited for the tone. "Lieutenant, call me back." Sam jabbed at the phone's touch screen and tossed it into the car's cup holder. "She's not picking up. I'm not surprised; she leaves her phone in all kinds of weird places. It's fine – I was supposed to drop by today anyway."

"I thought you said she wasn't military?" Natasha asked from the backseat.

Sam chuckled a little. "She's not – she just thinks she is when she gets drunk."

Sam turned off the main road and slowed as they trundled onto a long gravel driveway covered by an archway of old trees swaying overhead.

"How do you know this place is safe?" Steve asked, his head turning to read a sign as they drove past._ Foxhole Barns_, read the welcoming sign. Slightly harder to read, an inscription along the bottom of the sign read _come into the peace of wild things_.

Sam drifted to the left side of the driveway to miss a divot. "It's a therapy farm for vets with PTSD – a place to come and ride horses but not be too far from the VA in DC." He drifted back to the right to avoid another divot. "She's pretty old-school; doesn't bother with security cameras."

The trees parted like curtains as they drove deeper into the property, swinging out to the sides to follow a fence line as the land rolled down into a valley. The driveway dipped down as they approached and revealed a barn and farmhouse, set far back into the property, with an array of fences containing horses only mildly interested in the car driving past.

A thick carpet of vibrant, warm orange flowers surrounded the buildings, swaying in the gentle breeze and promising they smelled like sunshine. As they pulled around the drive to park in front of the house and stepped out of Sam's car, Steve took a moment to admire the flowers. "California Poppies?" Steve asked.

"Yeah," Sam confirmed. "How'd you know?"

"Lucky guess." They were a perfect orange; so vibrant the green stems looked a dull gray-green just by proximity. Even without Sam's confirmation that followed, it was the only flower they could possibly be. He'd heard of them only in reference – _how close am I?_

Sam glanced around, seemingly spotting his target in the barn. "Listen," he said to Steve and Natasha, "Al doesn't like surprises, and she's technically closed today – you should wait in the office." Sam pointed to the building opposite the barn. "It should be empty; make yourselves comfortable."

"It's nice here," Natasha commented, her boots kicking up a bit of dust as they crossed the driveway. "Quiet."

"And no cameras," Steve added. "Since when did privacy become 'old school'?" Steve asked as he opened the office door for Natasha. The office door opened without so much as a whisper of complaint, and clicked shut the same.

She smirked, her eyes laughing at his vintage chivalry. "About 1995."

Steve set his shield down just inside the door, leaning it against the wall with a quiet tap of the vibranium. It seemed less like an office than a relaxing lounge space. There were a few desks near the periphery, but mostly firm sofas and warm lighting. "Cozy," Natasha praised. Or at least, it was high praise coming from Natasha, who generally found most public spaces to be slightly uncomfortable given the level of exposure.

Steve wandered around for lack of better things to do. A bookcase on the far wall contained an eclectic mix of equestrian care guides and _Guns & Ammo _magazines, with a number of self-help guides for good measure. A few board games appeared to be in the middle of a round, and a chess board occupied a table by the window with post it notes littered all around.

_NO TOUCHIE under pain of pineapple_

_-DON'T THREATEN MY PIZZA, DAN_

_Don't touch my game, Tom_

_-I touched it_

_Your pizza is next_

Everything about the space exuded an aura of comfort and support – a place to release the burden of trying to live up to civilian expectations and enjoy the brotherhood. Steve had avoided enough somber spaces since his long sleep; therapists with sympathetic faces and scribbling pencils. _This_ is what he'd needed; a quiet acknowledgement of suffering and gentle assistance in the development of coping mechanisms. People who knew that the grief never really went away, but could be given a name and sometimes hidden behind a door in your memories.

"I'm guessing this is the owner." Natasha's attention had focused on a wall of photographs by a desk nearly buried in paperwork. "I thought she'd be older. Reminds me a bit of your neighbor – with the hair." She gestured vaguely.

Steve's eyebrows rose in interest, and he followed Natasha's pointing finger to a photograph centered on the wall. Sam stood with a large, tawny horse as a smaller blonde figure held a set of leaders, preventing the horse from biting the Paratrooper. A smirk of a smile graced Steve's face as Sam's concerned expression came into clear focus. The smile fell away instantly as he turned his attention to the farm owner's face.

_Impossible._ He seized the frame from the wall, accidentally pulling the hook out as well.

"What the hell, Rogers?" Natasha barked, brushing drywall dust from her sleeve.

"This can't be right," Steve insisted. Blonde hair with sloppy curls, eyes as dark as pitch, the shape of the jaw, a quirk of the lips… _impossible._

"Why?" Natasha looked at the photo. "Something wrong?"

Unmistakably so. He'd met a series of descendants of old friends, looked through a series of photos from lives that had passed while he slept in the ice, but no amount of genetic strength could account for the face_ identical _to one Alice Shaw he was trying to convince himself he wasn't seeing. "Just that the owner's been _dead_ for seventy years."

"LMD, you think?" Natasha asked, retrieving a pistol from her pocket. A Life Model Decoy wearing a seventy-year-old dead woman's face? If that was the case, it was an offense to her memory. I was an offense to the memory of the Howling Commandos.

Something had happened to the world while Steve slept in the ice. Steve couldn't begin to count the things he'd lost, and continued to lose by inches as he fought to stand his ground. The modern world had no need for his courtesy or his values, only the soldier; the obedient tool to point at problems and bludgeon them into submission.

_No more._

This new world with its new glory and new _extraordinary_ could keep it. This new world in such a _damn fucking hurry_ could keep that pace and race itself to the finish line. Steve would be walking behind, just making sure no one got run over or forgotten; that their freedom to thrive remained untarnished. He would be there to hold up the memorials of heroes so they could stand in the sun one last time.

No man left behind. No memory forgotten. No legacy defiled.

Steve retrieved his shield. "Let's go ask."

* * *

A/N: Is this how you expected a reunion to go down? Probably not. This is the last update for the week, folks. I've got a busy weekend at home and then I leave for my next month-long work trip, so my goal is to update again by **March 31.**

I LOVE my reviewers: ghost. of. the. night. 99, SomebodyWhoCares, bananaberrybat, TrilbyBard, Lucy Jacob, AquaBluey, TImeLordsRule, Sanguinary Tide, and Tasteless Hooligans!

**PLEASE REVIEW! It gives me life. Support the continued living of this poor writer.**

**A note about reviews:** I know it's really easy to just read the chapter and go back to your life, but your feedback is the most precious part to me about writing. Not only does it help to identify the holes in my writing (things that need further explanation, et al), but also sometimes what you're hoping happens, or just that you love it! Your encouragement and reviews are what drives me to keep writing, so I'm stopping just short of begging you to leave a review when you read. It lets me know that you enjoyed it (or didn't – be real), and appreciate me taking the time to sit down and write. So… thank you for taking the time to write me a sentence or two, because I've written nearly half a million words (says my legacy stats) for you.


	8. Lieutenant Shaw

Alice Sigynsdottir signed checks with a little shake of the double "t" of her name; even after four years she felt like an imposter in Sigynsdottir's life. _My life_, she had to remind herself. She wore Sigynsdottir's clothes, drove her car, and read through her bills.

_Alice Shaw_, the bullet around her neck whispered in the dark. It whispered at two in the morning when she woke up screaming. It comforted her when Alice forgot where she was; when the dead screamed her name and begged for death to come with swift measure to end suffering.

_Alice Sigynsdottir_, she had to reply. She needed to be the same Alice that ran Foxhole Barns, that laughed over chess games and seized the reins of unruly horses. She needed to be strong in a world that didn't know she needed to be strong.

Alice glanced out the little barn window as Sam's car drove by, kicking up dust in the dry afternoon. It registered briefly as something she'd been expecting so Alice turned her attention back to the horse whose nose she was stroking. She liked to come out to the barn when her hands started to shake; the horses gave her comfort where the modern century did not.

"You understand, don't you?" she whispered to the horse that returned her affection by nipping at her braid. Alice preferred to get lost in her work; she didn't need to remember who she was supposed to be with a brush in her hand. Alice was just _Alice_ with no additional fiddly bits at the end.

Alice heard Sam swear sharply from the feed room down the hall and sighed bemusedly. She left the stall the large horse was occupying as the barn door slid open and shut again; the familiar sound of Sam's boots tromping down the center aisle.

"Hey Sam," she greeted lightly.

"_Alice!_" Sam barked. "How many times are you going to leave your phone in the feed room?"

He tossed her the offending rectangle and Alice fumbled to catch it. "Only once a week – that's not so bad, is it?"

"It is when I need to get a hold of you!"

She tucked the phone in her pocket. "Jesus, Sam; what's the big deal?"

He braced one arm on a beam, looking beyond exasperated. "Al, I need your help."

"Name it," Alice replied instantly. She'd told Sam any number of times that he could always come to her for help, and he rarely did so.

Sam hesitated. "I need you to help us break into Fort Meade."

After a pregnant paused, she chuckled. "Okay – wasn't expecting that from you." Alice's eyes narrowed. "Who's 'us'?"

Sam grinned. "Okay – try not to lose your mind, but _Captain America_ is in your office."

Alice's heart stuttered and revved to re-start. "…what?"

Sam nodded. "There's a lot of bad shit going down, and we need some of my old gear from Meade to make it right."

Alice was still stuck on _Captain America_. _"…what?"_

Sam waved a hand in front of her dazed eyes. "You okay in there, Al?"

Alice put a hand on her chest, pressing the concealed bullet against her sternum to ground herself. "I think I need to sit down."

Sam instantly retrieved a stool and brought it for Alice. She fanned her face, trying to get air into her lungs faster. "Damn, you okay? I didn't think you were that big of a fan."

"It's not that," she breathed, "I just-" Alice shrieked in surprise as the barn door burst open. "Jesus _fucking _Christ!" she yelled.

In a hot blaze of sunshine, because _of course_ Captain America had to make the most dramatic entrance ever, Steve and a woman Alice sort of recognized stormed the barn. Steve hefted his shield like it was as deadly as the pistol his companion carried. Dumbstruck by his presence – a face and a voice that had haunted her regretful dreams – Alice failed to react at all beyond her initial shriek of surprise.

"Sam, s_tep away_," Steve ordered. His red-headed companion aimed her pistol at Alice's head. _Fat lot of good that would do,_ Alice thought. _It'd just scare Sam to death and give me another mess to clean up._

Sam stepped in front of Alice, trying to shield her from the sudden danger. "She's cool, man; this is-"

"Who are you?" Steve demanded, interrupting Sam.

Alice stepped to one side, holding up her hands pleadingly. "I'm Alice Sigynsdottir; I own this barn." Alice tried to keep her voice calm.

Sam followed her motion, still keeping most of his body between them. "She's a _friend_, Cap," he insisted.

Steve was swiftly losing his patience, and the redhead moved two steps to her left; moving to flank the target. "Looks to me like you're wearing the face of a dead woman; Lieutenant _Alice Shaw_."

Alice looked at the two of them, and Sam tried turning his head slightly to address her. "What are they talking about, Al?" His soft tone hurt her; confused, disbelieving. Even as he stood to try to protect her, Alice needed to drop the thin ruse to keep her friend safe.

She put a hand on Sam's shoulder, squeezing it as she walked around him. "I was Alice Shaw."

Steve didn't look convinced. If anything, he looked more furious. "Alice Shaw died in 1944; try again."

"You never really trusted me, did you? Always knew something was a little off." Alice pulled at the gold chain around her neck, drawing the copper bullet into view. "They say you're the 'man out of time'," Alice slipped the chain over her head. "I just did it in the other direction."

She took a step towards Steve, holding the bullet in her outstretched hand. "My name was First Lieutenant Alice Shaw."

Steve's intense, accusing stare burned through her, but Alice couldn't let it stop her. "I was the Wicked Witch of the Western Front, the Cavalry, and the Angel of Azzano." Some of the fire bled away, and Alice continued, taking another step to close the distance between them.

"I used to yell at you for bleeding all over battlefields, acting like that shield covered your whole damn body." The redhead – Alice recognized her from the news as Black Widow – tightened her grip on the pistol as Alice took another step closer, but Steve held up a hand.

Alice took that as permission to take another step closer. "Dum Dum Dugan was my best friend, and…" Her voice cracked as she came within arm's reach of Steve. "And I've never loved anyone like I loved James Buchanan Barnes."

She let the bullet swing on the chain and Steve caught it as the shining spot of bronze was closest to him. Alice refused to let go of her end of the necklace, forcing Steve to take another step to take a closer look. Bucky's crude scratches shone in the barn's warm light.

_Alice Shaw._

Steve's expression didn't change. He let go of the bullet and it swung back towards Alice, tilting through the air like some mysterious dowsing stone. She'd been hoping for some kind of recognition in his eyes, something further from the accusatory glare or the twitch in the arm of a man ready for a fight.

_Alice Shaw_, it soothed as she slipped the chain back over her head.

"I am First Lieutenant Alice Shaw_,_" she declared, certain now more than ever that she spoke the truth. She hadn't been Alice Sigynsdottir since 1943.

"Steve?" the Widow asked, her pistol still raised. Alice didn't break the heavy staring contest, trying to pour as much confidence and certainty into her eyes as she felt they could carry.

The crick in her neck had other plans for the near future and she was almost ready to break her gaze when Steve reached out his right hand. Alice hesitated briefly, but grasped it with hers.

"Good to see you again, Lieutenant." Steve's eyes said more than his words. "You couldn't drop a fella a line?" he asked, the joviality of his tone slightly tight.

Alice's grip slackened as relief shot through her, followed swiftly by a combination of nostalgia and desperation. "Long-distance calls can be awfully expensive these days."

The Widow's safety clicked on again as she and Steve broke the handshake that should have been a hug, had they been closer to something like friends in 1944.

"So you're cool again – just like that?" Sam was appalled.

"Just like that," Alice grinned.

"That's great – can someone explain to me what the hell just happened?!"

* * *

"Fort Meade, eh?" Alice tapped her thumb nail on the glass, then zooming out on the tablet. "The hardest part about getting there from here is going to be crossing the freeway to their South. There's a bridge…" she tracked along the screen, before stopping at a tiny building. "Yup, by the Pet Center. I've got a road that runs nearly parallel, so if you take out a section of fence and head in that way you should be able to avoid a checkpoint."

It felt so damn familiar, the four of them seated around Alice's table strategizing over a map. The minor differences included the expensive coffee in four porcelain mugs, the air-conditioned room, and the digital map on an iPad.

"Aren't you concerned about the – oh, shit," Steve swore as he tried to point something out on the tablet and managed to zoom entirely out instead. He held up his hands. "What did I do?"

"You can't touch the screen," Natasha chastised. "We've been over this."

"We've been over _phones_," Steve retorted.

"Same concept, bigger screen," Alice supplied briefly. "How long do you have to get in?"

Sam checked his watch. "We should probably get going."

"Wouldn't want to be late for our date stealing government property." Natasha slid up from her seat as smooth as mink fur is sleek. Alice didn't know how the woman moved in a way that looked like leather-coated steel, but she imagined it had a lot to do with the amount of muscle she was hiding under that jacket.

"And here I forgot to buy flowers," Sam added.

"You're sure this can't come back on you?" Steve asked Alice as she turned off the iPad.

"I don't think so," she shook her head. "People drive around here all the time; I make it pretty clear all types are allowed on my farm as long as they don't hurt the horses or my other guests. The cops have been called on a few fights just on the other side of my property line before."

"And who called the police?" Steve asked, a knowing smile spreading across his face.

Alice shrugged. "Couldn't say, but from the voice I'd imagine they're terribly attractive."

Steve laughed. His eyes sparkled as he clapped her on the shoulder and Alice felt a little color bleed back into her life. It felt so familiar, having him in her home. The return of _rightness_ with his presence dulled the ache at the bottom of the well of her soul. "We have a lot to talk about," he declared.

They sure did. "There's plenty of time for that; _later_. You've got to knock out Hitler, remember?"

"I'm holding you to that." Steve's shield sang briefly as he picked it up, slipping his arm through the straps seemed like the easiest motion to him. "Don't get on any boats until I get back."

"Aye aye," Alice saluted lazily.

Sam caught her eye as Steve turned away, the heavy frown he'd been wearing for the last hour still plastered firmly to his forehead. Alice clasped her arms behind her back and put on her best doe eyes. "Sam," she started, her tone placating.

"Lieutenant," he drawled coldly.

"Hey," Alice breathed, "there's no need to be mean about this."

"Sure, Al." Sam looked away. "Thanks for the intel."

Alice tugged at his sleeve. "Call me after? I'll worry if you don't."

Sam's glare lost some of its bitterness. "If you keep your _damn phone_ on you."

"I promise," she swore, crossing an 'x' over her heart.

"And when I do," Sam's voice rose slightly and he threatened her with a pointed finger, "I expect a _thorough_, much more satisfying explanation than '_I traveled back through time to help win World War Two_'!"

Alice chewed her lip and Sam's eyebrows shot up accusingly. "Okay," she finally agreed. "We'll talk. I owe you that much. Steve too, probably."

Sam grumbled darkly. His shoulders heaved in a steadying breath but he took the bag of tools that Alice offered without any lingering bitterness. "I mean it, Al; _whole story_."

"I promise," Alice swore for the second time in as many minutes. "They'll leave you behind if you don't catch up."

Sam jangled his keys. "They won't get far without these."

The engine of his car revved outside in contradiction to that statement.

"I think the spy hotwired your car." Alice curled her lips in to hide her smile.

"Not one more word out of you," Sam pointed, shouldering the bag and running down the stairs as his engine revved louder. "_I told you not to mess with my car, Romanoff!"_

Alice laughed as she started to clear the coffee cups from the table, intent on carrying them to the sink. She paused to hear Sam bang on the hood of his car, demanding that the Widow let him drive his own car, thank you very much. She jogged to the far window, arms full of porcelain, to watch the Widow slide into the backseat with a smirk and Sam, shaking his head at her, step into the driver's seat.

"Just yell at the Winter Soldier like that and we'll be done by dinnertime," Natasha chuckled.

The doors all closed and the car spit gravel as it pulled down the driveway.

_Just yell at the Winter Soldier like that_

Alice didn't feel the cups fall from her arms as a wave of shock crashed over her body.

It took a moment to process.

_Winter Soldier_

She ran for the door, not caring that she was stepping over shards of porcelain in bare feet. The car was long gone, leaving only a high trail of dust lingering in the air.

"_Sam!_" she screamed, knowing full well that he couldn't hear her.

Alice yanked the phone out of her pocket, stabbing Sam's face with her pointer finger but hesitating over the green 'dial' button. What good would it do? It would absolutely make more questions – _how do you know, Alice, what did you know, what did you let happen – _but if Cable was right, it's not like Bucky would know them, right?

Alice's hand shook over the phone.

It wasn't like she could do anything about it, right?

She put her phone away.

It was actually impossible, right? Her blood pressure thought otherwise.

Couldn't it be that the title was just passed down like a mantle, or a Dread Pirate Roberts? But in her heart, Alice couldn't believe that. Not that she knew what to do about it – she didn't know where to look for him, and couldn't bear to call Sam or Steve to tell them their adversary was another blast from the past.

Alice choked on air, the uncertainty and confusion seizing her lungs. _What do I do?_ Her brain ached as she sought through a shallow set of experiences for some reasonable action that would lead her to the Winter Soldier. But she was just Alice, she'd played her part in protecting Sam and Steve, and that would have to be enough.

Against her heart, the copper bullet rocked against her skin.

_Alice Shaw._

Her breath rushed through her chest in a staccato burst.

_He's alive._

* * *

A/N: Alice knew that Bucky would become the Winter Soldier (ref: WIAS _The Scourge_), but she believed he died in the late 90s, which Cable let her believe. Alice is absolutely not a fighter, but also not the best strategist. I know y'all want her to call Sam/Steve and give them the heads-up. But nah.

Wow! I'm so happy with all the great feedback I got regarding the last chapter; it really inspired me to sit down and crank this chapter out. We're staying in Canon-verse until the end of Act 1 (Resurrection), then Acts 2 and 3 are going to be AU (if you're wondering).

I'm posting the last three of Act 1 in one Super Fun block, so be on the lookout for chapter 9 tomorrow (3/28); **The News**, and chapter 10 the day after (3/29), **Sentimental(e)**. I'm doing this because I worry all of you will kill me because of the cliffhangers otherwise. I'm not quiiiiite done with Ch. 10, but I'm hoping all the wonderful outporing of love from all of you will help inspire me to finish.

I love my reviewers! TimeLordsRule, LisaPark, animexchick, SunnySides, Sanguinary Tide, Lucy Jacob, bananaraberrybat, TikiKiki, ghost. Of. The. night. 99, Bee, PistolHattersButtercup, TastelessHooligans, SabakuNoGaara426, SomebodyWhoCares, AquaBluey, QueenofCloud, Guest, Raspberry, fairytailbunchan, tuckerjnp1, idontknoworcareanymore, Writings in the Dark, GlaresThatKill, elorika10, SpoilersXOXO, Natsuko26, stormgirl92, ghoulish-reader, Momochan77, LieuDrake, sonnig, and Xanderseye! (whew! Where did all of you come from all of the sudden?)

**PLEASE REVIEW!**

_**We just passed 100 reviews! Let's keep the momentum going! The more reviews I get the faster I write.**_


	9. The News

Nothing good ever happened on the news. Not to say that news networks didn't make up an effort to add 'fluff' stories to break up the misery – _watch little Miffy respond to wand spells from her owner! – _but the tragedy just kept coming hour after hour, day after day.

_Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone_

_Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Lost_

_Russia Violates Ukrainian Sovereignty_

Alice tried to avoid the news. She could almost miss the days – her Cuckoo days invading the past – when the news was heavily filtered through a heavy film of patriotism.

But times had changed, it seemed.

_Captain America fugitive from SHIELD_

Unsure of how else to occupy her energies, Alice stayed glued to the television and tried to absorb the entire light spectrum through her eyes. Alice whittled down her nails with her teeth until her beds bled, healed, and resumed chewing.

_Captain America Suspected of Treason_

Sam flew through the air on a winged jet-pack, zipping past a news helicopter at incredible speeds. The news helicopter circled overhead as Steve knelt on the ground, hands over his head. A flash of red from the Widow, all hauled into heavy armored vans at gunpoint.

_Captain America in Custody_

But most important – the most of the most – was a flash of a man in black with ratty brown hair and a metal arm. A glimpse of a face that called to her soul. She'd seen him grapple with Steve. She'd seen a hesitation before an explosion.

Alice had to find the newscast online so that she could pause, rewind, and replay the two seconds of footage. His frame had filled out with additional muscle, and his strut could hardly be called casual anymore, but there were other signs.

Steve stopped, straightened, and stared. It was just a second, but it was enough. _It's true_, Alice thought as she played the two second snipped for the twentieth time, _he's alive. _The footage coming from the helicopter shook and trembled, and Alice couldn't read the expression on his face, but she knew, _he's alive. _

The armored vans pulled away and the copters moved on and the news seemed to forget for a moment that something terrible had happened in the District. The news couldn't fathom why Captain America was wanted by SHIELD, but the agency could do no wrong so the attention of the news started to wander.

It didn't last long.

The news blew up again, blaring with warning cries and _Breaking News: SHIELD Under Attack? _Alice gasped in horror as explosions filled the screen and the three carriers fired upon each other. They drifted dangerously down through the sky, eventually crashing into the Triskelion and into the Potomac River. The news couldn't keep up with the action. _Another Incident?_, one asked. _America Under Attack!,_ the other declared.

Alice had her choice of news outlets – every screen everywhere flashed with replays of explosions and gunfire and machines falling from the sky. She had her choice of screaming heads, and dissent, and anger; it all fed into her need for information; a desperation to know what had happened to her friends. No one seemed to have any answers, only outrage and fear, and confusion.

Confusion ran rampant, slapping red into people's faces and tightening men's ties until their heads swelled with rage. It smudged the liner around women's eyes, revealing whatever concealed fear they'd dabbed away in a bathroom mirror.

It took until the smoldering wreckage stopped threatening the greater DC area for Alice's phone to ring with the news.

"_Alice,_" Sam barked the instant she answered.

Alice's heart sang. "Are you alright? I've been watching the news, and-"

He cut her off. "_Can you come to GW Hospital?"_

"… Sam?" It was his no-nonsense voice.

"_Room 231."_ He hung up.

Alice could do without repeating the drive into DC. Roadblocks sprung up at almost every turn and she had to double back, cut through neighborhoods, and try a different attack. The news blared on the radio, spitting _Treason, Terrorists, Toppled._

Alice broke the power button on her radio in her fury, leaving the damnable contraption stuck _on_. She missed a few more turns as her blood pressure rose – from stress, from fear, from anger. She was grateful as she parked in the hospital's garage and jogged through the entry doors, only to find every screen tuned to the news.

The news in the hospital room played like a broken record. Fallen Heli-carriers, fallen agencies, fallen heroes. Alice couldn't look at the footage and Sam couldn't look away. It didn't help the tension in the room, and whatever bitterness he'd felt over her sudden reveal as a time-traveler hadn't aged well over the previous 24 hours. To be fair, quite a lot had happened.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sam sounded hurt, finally speaking over the television.

Alice didn't pretend she didn't know what he was asking."What was I supposed to say, Sam?"

He grunted, sinking lower in the uncomfortable hospital chair. "I don't know; something."

"Sam," Alice started gently. "I don't think there's any good way to tell your friend you've traveled through time. If you have suggestions, I'm open to hearing them."

Sam sat up in his chair, raising an eyebrow. "Okay, _Lieutenant_."

"First Lieutenant," Alice corrected.

"You traveled back in time to 1944."

"1943."

"And you were a nurse – with Captain America?"

"I started out at a Field Hospital, and was recruited by the Commandos after… I was captured with an Infantry unit and held prisoner in a HYDRA work camp."

"And you died."

"They thought I died. I just came back to 2010." Alice stared at Steve's face, beat all to hell but somehow still serene. "I didn't mean to leave. I meant to stay… I just didn't get the chance."

"Why'd you go? Why do it Just… _why_?" Sam's tone had softened as they strayed deeper into sensitive territory, but his last question retained some of the initial bitterness.

Alice paused. There was a multitude of reasons she'd accepted the mission, and barely any of them made sense without making her sound crazy, naïve, or power-hungry.

"I went to save his life." Alice nodded to Steve's sleeping form.

The news barked loudly through the room as dissent and disagreement grew now that the processing had begun.

_Unbelievable,_ they cried.

_Freedoms,_ they cried.

_Justice_, they cried.

* * *

Alice laughed as she poured the cocoa into two pristine white porcelain mugs, little slivers slipping down the sides as all good cocoa should. "I'm telling you, Steve, the 1990s were a lawless time to grow up."

He raised an eyebrow as he accepted his mug. "Was there still Polio?"

Alice cranked the handle on her window to slide it shut to keep out the stiff autumn breeze before joining Steve at the gaming table in her office. "Not so much – but we did have _moon shoes_, and that could cause basically the same problems."

Sundays were Steve Days for Alice. Being closed, she could enjoy the company of her oldest friend – a pun she made quite often – without the discomfort of fame or the lies of time.

"I shouldn't be surprised you're doing as well as you are," Alice commented, grabbing their favorite pack of cards from the heavily game-laden bookshelf.

"Modern medicine's pretty great."

"I'd argue vintage is better, in your case." Alice tossed the packaged cards from one hand to another, thinking through the motion. She set it down on the table, leaving her hand on it for a moment and sat down across from Steve, drawing her mug of cocoa close.

"You got something you want to say?" He asked, slightly surprised by the abrupt change in the mood of the room.

"I missed all of you so much." Alice stirred the cocoa idly but it drew all of her attention. "After I was brought back… I had a really hard time."

"Alice," Steve set a hand on hers. "We all sacrificed."

"That's the thing," Alice laughed bitterly, "I think I'm the reason you had to."

"Sam says you went to 1943 to save my life," Steve tested the waters, "but that you wouldn't say much more about it."

"Not much more to say about it." Alice tapped her spoon too hard on the side of her mug. "I…" her face twisted painfully as she tried and failed to hide her grief. "I didn't know what would happen. Not… not all of it. I promised you answers, and I think I'm ready to give them to you."

Steve sat up a little straighter in his seat.

"I was twelve when I found out I was a mutant. Not an 'enhanced', like some; I was born with my powers. I didn't have some fantastic coming-out like lots of mutants; I just happened to fail a mandatory blood test. I'll get to why this is important in a second, just…" Alice tapped her thumbnail against her mug. "Just let me get this out."

"My parents saw on the news what was happening to people like me, so when I was seventeen they made me come to New York from California. I never quite fit in there; an older girl didn't like me, and we really got into it one day. She… lost control of her powers, and she broke my arm. I healed pretty fast – that's my gift, you see – but the school wanted me to apologize to her. That's how it works these days; if you have strong powers, you have value." Alice's eyes flicked to the window. "My powers are not of value."

Alice's mug had long ago emptied but she still stared into it like the porcelain still held answers. "I refused, and the others genuinely couldn't understand why. It got… maybe I was just sensitive, but I couldn't stand being on the outside. I left the school and got a job as a farm hand on my own. That was maybe… eight or ten years before I got a knock on my door."

"I was asked to go back in time; to preserve the timeline and prevent some terrible catastrophe that followed _your_ death. I was told that – if you died – that…" Alice trailed off, standing with a screech of the chair as her nervous energy got the better of her. She also couldn't be so close to Steve's face when she told him the truth. "I know things I'm not supposed to know. One of the things I was told is that Bucky would become the Winter Soldier."

Alice rubbed her arms in a self-comforting motion. "I was a naïve idiot to accept, but everyone knew that. I believed, for once, that I could be special; that I could have value. I…" Alice looked up at the ceiling as she fought back tears, blinking rapidly. "I deserve your hate if you hate me."

Steve clasped his hands together on the table, his gaze directed down at the table. "I think," he started, his jaw still too tense for words to come out properly, "I never once saw you leave a man down."

Steve rubbed his thumbs together, and it seemed to help ease a little of his tension. "You're right that it was hard to trust you; that something just felt off… but you never gave me any reason to believe you weren't completely dedicated to the wellbeing of the Commandos."

Alice held her breath, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. There had to be some lingering condition, some hidden resentment… Alice hated herself enough for it to be perfectly reasonable that Steve would hate her too.

Steve reached for the cards across the table and began to shuffle the deck. "If you're trying to get out of losing every week, you'll need a better excuse than that."

Alice balked. "Steve, I-"

"Sit down and lose with some dignity, Lieutenant." Steve started dealing the cards. "That's an order." The cards slid easily across the table. "Turn the news off while you're at it."

Alice lifted the remote to turn off the TV as the newscaster frowned contemplatively, steepling long fingers.

_Complexity,_ he reasoned.

_Understanding, _he paused.

_Recovery_, he offered.

* * *

Alice listened with half an ear to Natasha's testimony playing in the background as she brushed down the horses. She'd kept up enough with the news to know when to turn her attention back to the modern world, but for the most part ,she'd heeded Steve's advice and just left well enough alone.

_Yes, the world is a vulnerable place, and yes, we helped make it that way. But we're also the ones best qualified to defend it. So if you want to arrest me, arrest me. You'll know where to find me._

"Damn, honey," Alice approved under her breath. It was quite the mic drop.

"Alice," a warm voice called from outside the stall.

Her head turned at the sound but so did the head of large horse Alice was grooming, blocking her view. "Move, you great galoot," she chastised, patting the horse's neck. She ducked under and around, avoiding a snap of biting teeth at the motion and sliding the door shut. That particular mare didn't enjoy having her spa-time interrupted.

"Steve!" Alice exclaimed joyfully, brushing her hands off on her jeans and opening her arms for a quick hug. "I haven't seen you around for a minute – how are you?" Steve returned the hug with about half of Alice's enthusiasm, which flicked on a warning light in her head. She gripped his shoulders as she pulled back from the hug, staring him dead in the eyes. "What's wrong?"

Steve didn't beat around the bush. "I'm going after him."

Alice let go of his shoulders as a little of her strength drained away in a flash. "…oh?"

Steve reached into his back pocket. "Natasha called in a few favors to get me some intel, but…" he withdrew a somewhat wrinkled and poorly-treated photograph. "I figured… you don't have anything."

He held out the little square and Alice's hands trembled in accepting it. It was Bucky, of course; his face was exactly as she remembered him from 1944. He looked like he hadn't quite been expecting the photograph at the moment it was taken, and it left his features slightly soft. The slightly askew tilt of his hat betrayed a sometimes juvenile defiance that Alice dearly missed.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Means… the world to me."

"I'd ask you to come with us, but," Steve trailed off, fluffing the hair on the back of his head as he searched for the right words.

Alice grimaced resolutely. "I sort of planted myself here."

Steve chuckled. "Alice Shaw turned into a plant at last; I'm not surprised."

"_Sigynsdottir_," she corrected.

He grinned. "I always thought it'd end up being _Barnes_." Steve realized he'd accidentally tread on sensitive territory and his expression turned apologetic; it was too soon for the joke, even if it wasn't really a joke.

Alice choked a little on a laugh that was too forced. "Do you think he remembers us?"

"I know he does." Steve sounded certain, tucking his hands into his pockets. "He pulled me from the river; that has to mean something." Steve averted his eyes politely as Alice wiped away a tear that slipped out of her realm of control. "Did you ever get to the exhibit?"

"Briefly," Alice replied. "It was… hard." Agonizing is what it was. That was before she'd met up with Steve again, before she'd been good friends with Sam – even though he was sort of avoiding her at the moment.

Steve nodded in agreement. "It was strange to see everyone – especially you."

Alice blinked. "I'm in the exhibit?"

"They had some nice things to say." Steve started walking towards the barn door and Alice followed. "I'm pretty sure whoever put it together figured out that you and Buck were an item."

"Is that so?" Alice stopped in the doorway as Steve stepped into the sun. "Maybe I'll give it another try."

"You should," Steve agreed.

Alice rapped her knuckles on the side of the barn. "Hey, good luck. Finding him, I mean."

Steve squinted a little against the bright sun creeping towards late afternoon. He nodded, bobbing his head in a reserved motion that always made Alice think it must be a holdover from the days when he wasn't a superhero. "What I said before still stands – you stay away from ships until I bring him back. Can't have a repeat of last time."

"I promise." Alice crossed an 'x' over her chest.

She watched as Steve climbed into his almost-too-small car and pulled out of her driveway. She waved as he passed by, and he waved out the window. A cloud of dust followed him down her driveway, catching the light and twisting it into waves.

Alice walked back into the barn, and switched the radio from the news to music.

* * *

A/N: feeEEEEEEEEEeeeelings!

Jiminy Cricket the length of these chapters is getting out of control.

This was kind of a weird chapter in my outline; a 'passage-of-time' filler that became its own creature (as they always do). This is literally the outline for this chapter:

_9\. The News  
...a. Alice watching everything go down on the news  
...b. Steve's recovery in hospital  
...i. Nat and congressional hearing_

THAT. IS. IT.

I basically know the major points that need to be touched on, and the title of the chapter gives me the feeling I need to follow, but the rest of it is pure bullshitting. Granted, some of the other chapters have much, _much_ more guidance, but this was not one of them.

This ended up being a lot about Alice's self-loathing reflected in how the country must have viewed Steve and the Avengers post- SHIELD, and her admitting that she feels selfish for choosing to go back is… interesting. It came at me out of nowhere, and I'm the freakin' author.

Keep an eye out and _hold on to your tits_ tomorrow for the last chapter of Act 1: **Sentimental(e)**. (which I totally haven't finished writing yet...)

I LOVE MY REVIEWERS: PistolHattersButtercuo, LieuDrake, quixoticquin, ghost. of. the. night. 99, Momochan77, SabakuNoGaara426, Sanguinary Tide, AquaBluey, elorika10, ItsJustABook, Guest, tuckerjnp1, TimeLordsRule, SunnySides, TikiKiki, LadyGely92, RainbowLabs, Xanderseye1, sophiedoph, Lucy Jacob, and Idontknoworcareanymore!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	10. Sentimental(e)

Homeless shelters are always good places to hide. As long as you get there before they reach maximum capacity, you're always guaranteed a bed, a hot meal, and the anonymity of a large crowd of people as bedraggled and filthy as any other fugitive. There's also the added benefit of free clothes, and no questions asked.

The Soldier couldn't explain why he kept coming back to the District's largest shelter; he should have moved on long ago. He'd arrived in the middle of a chaotic afternoon, dressed in the sloppiest, wettest, dirtiest clothes he'd stolen straight from the garbage. He'd expected… the Soldier hadn't expected much. Instead, they greeted him with a temperate smile and a welcoming arm.

"Do you want any more soup, dear?" The world's littlest old lady approached the Soldier's cot, hands trembling from age alone as she offered him another portion of dinner. _Joy_, the Soldier remembered. She'd introduced herself as _Joy_.

The Soldier shook his head gently and she nodded cheerily. "Alright dear, just come up if you change your mind." She shuffled along, her voice barely carrying beyond arm's reach as she looked to endlessly fill hungry bellies.

The Soldier used the large communal locker rooms to scrub clean as infrequently as possible, and usually in the dead of night to avoid stares at his metal arm. The harsh soap stung at the cuts on his face and the hot water soothed the deep bruises that were still working their way towards being fully healed. The sensation of beating water fought against the confusion milling in his head, still growing, still twisting his thoughts until he didn't know which way was up.

_Breathe_, the voice commanded, clearly audible in his head even through the weedy uncertainty and the high pressure showerhead.

His face stung from the cuts as he scrubbed harder, as if that would strip away the flesh that was becoming so unbearably uncomfortable.

_Plantain,_ the voice recommended more gently than usual, _chew and apply to cuts to prevent infection._

That was new.

But _everything_ was new.

The sensation of bleached, over-dried towels on his skin as he dried off felt sharper than sensation should be; more real than before. The act of living in his skin seemed louder every day, and every time the Soldier felt he had a handle on the level of confusion and sensation and mismatched memories that erupted from seemingly nowhere, even more would appear.

The act of drinking coffee triggered a memory of laughter, cold feet, and a cold nose.

Pulling on his boots in the morning made his fingers itch like touching old wool, even though the Soldier wore white cotton socks the shelter had provided.

Stepping out into the sunshine every morning left him sniffing at the air for some floral scent that never appeared.

The minefield of being outside in the world – _free_ – had grown nearly unbearable.

The voice whispered to him in the dark; the dark when he pressed his palms to his eyes to try to keep the sensations and memories from overwhelming him, the dark when the shelter turned all the lights off and the Soldier stayed awake so his screaming wouldn't disturb the other homeless, the dark when he screwed his eyes shut and tried to force a memory to make sense. _Breathe_.

The voice's whispers kept the weeds of memories and uncoordinated sensations from growing so high he could no longer see the horizon. But the voice had not whispered when he passed the poster on the wall. The voice had not commanded or warned or chuckled. When he passed the poster with the American flag and the man who had been his Mission standing on a ridge, and _**The Living Legend**_printed there, the voice _screamed._

It screamed without words, like the voice had never done before. The sound hurt his insides and made his eyes feel like they were bleeding. The voice screamed something about importance and feeling and memory and promises. _To the end of the Line._

The poster led him to the building, a large white rectangular building with more posters outside. The voice wanted him to go inside immediately, but the Soldier couldn't stomach it. He needed to be sure it was safe, sure he wouldn't be seen. The voice grumbled darkly about the delay.

The Soldier surveilled the building for days, watching the comings and goings, and only a few faces repeated.

_One_ – an old man who fed the pigeons even after the park rangers asked him to stop.

_Two_ – an art student, approximately twenty years old, who seemed repeatedly frustrated by his inability to draw the carousel.

And _three –_ a small, blonde woman who sat on the bench across from the main entrance from sunup to sundown every day, doing nothing but staring at the Soldier thought she must be some mentally ill homeless person – she wouldn't have been alone in the District – but her clothes and hair were too clean.

She drew more of his attention on the third day of his surveillance when she stood up and walked a few steps away from the bench towards the museum, then seemed to remember she'd forgotten her purse. She returned to the bench double-time, but sat down again instead of resuming her approach to the building.

The Soldier had followed a few paces, but froze as she jogged back. The slightly closer proximity gave him a slightly better look at her face.

Even twisted in frustration, her face seemed familiar.

Like the man from the battle; his Mission.

Painfully familiar.

She looked like… _Zhelaniye_.

Longing.

She stood from the bench as the guards locked the doors, casting one last long look before she followed the departing tourist groups out of the lawn.

The Soldier thought about her face, but could generate no further memories from the weedy undergrowth that night. The voice offered no support. He had a headache the next morning from the intensity of his frown.

She seemed so familiar. _Zhelaniye._ The Soldier grew ever-more certain that, if he got a closer look at her face, he would remember more. The real question that made him feel a little ill kept coming back around in the dark; did he want to? What if the woman was an old handler, come to retrieve him? What if the woman was dangerous?

_Breathe_, the voice's only contribution bordered on unhelpful. The stress of the passing days ate at him, along with the prolonged period without sleep. He didn't dare sleep for more than a few minutes, and generally holed up in the far shower stall of the locker room with a knife clutched in his hand to get any real rest. Any time spent on a cot in the shelter's open room was entirely a ruse, and a tedious one at that.

The _Longing_ woman returned the next day; day four of surveillance. She sat on the same bench, watching children file through the doors surrounded by a chorus of incessant chatter. The Soldier glanced around the crowd, confirming that she was the only repeat presence save for the guards and other employees of the area.

She seemed tenser today; sitting up with a ramrod-straight spine that didn't rest against the back of the bench. She stood not long after the building opened for the day, this time remembering her purse and took slow steps to cross the lawn.

She stopped to cross the street and clutched the little purse like she feared it would fly away. She vanished into a crowd as she joined the throng headed for the metal detectors at the main entrance.

The Soldier had no intention of following her that way.

He had seen enough of the comings and goings of the staff to know that the back door was likely left propped open for the smokers around the break for the first shift. It took only a few minutes to find the door, indeed propped open with a taped lock, and slip into the museum.

If he had been concerned that he might lose the little woman in the crowd, he followed a feeling that she hadn't gone far at all, and found her just inside the doors of the museum. She stood underneath a collection of planes suspended in the main hall, though her gaze didn't settle on any particular one.

She stuttered into motion when a tourist bumped her shoulder, stumbling forward and nearly falling. The appropriate exchange of apologies followed, and the woman stepped out of the immediate path of the flow of traffic into the building.

The Soldier followed her as she meandered through the building, keeping his head low and the cap firmly tilted down whenever the proximity got a little too close. Her unpredictable motions – breezing through entire exhibits, but stopping at every placard in a select few – made it difficult to keep a consistent distance.

He just needed to see her face, dammit. Tantalizingly close, glancing flashes from glass and mirrored surfaces distorted her features beyond anything helpful.

She took a hesitant side-step to avoid getting run over by a toddler, then took a hard right into an exhibit at the end of the hall. The Soldier kept his head low, avoiding making eye contact with the gathering crowd. Patriotic music and narration rattled his head, interrupting his internal checklist for ensuring concealment.

_Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes and Shaw are the only Howling Commandoes to give their lives in service of their country._

There was that name again. The Soldier followed the narration and lifted his head as he read the bottom of a sign that read _Bucky Barnes, 1917-1944._

He saw his face.

He'd only seen his reflection a few times, in cold glass before he dropped into the voice, but there could be no mistake.

That was _his_ face.

"Bucky?" an oddly familiar voice trembled with hesitation. He thought for a moment that the voice had returned, would remind him to breathe, but this wasn't in his head.

He had nearly forgotten about the woman he'd followed into the exhibit in his moment of shock. Much closer now, he could see the surprise in her eyes. She stood on the other side of the glass, her face framed by text and decoration.

He hadn't been expecting to see double.

Behind her hung a photo of _her_ face, grainy and colorless. _**The Angel of Azzano: History's Lost Howling Commando**__._

A seed, deep in the soil of the razed earth of his memory, sprouted among the weeds and confusion growing as far as the eye could see. He could hear her voice now that she was standing close to him, and it rang like a bell through his chest. Her voice lilted and rolled in identical waves to that of the voice that always found him in the cold and the dark, reminding him to breathe, reminding him to breathe, reminding him to _breathe_.

"Bucky," she repeated, walking quickly around the glass to approach him. Closer now, her eyes were shifting from surprised to concerned, and her words rang in his head the same way that the voice did.

But hearing it out loud… it hurt his head, felt like being electrocuted and buried alive. It took only two steps to close the space between them, seize her bare arm with his left, and push her backwards through a door marked _staff only. _

She gasped in surprise – or pain – at the brutal handling. The flutter of her hair brushed his face and he caught a whiff of her perfume – not really a perfume, but some combination of plants he couldn't identify by smell alone.

He pushed her against the cold wall of the stairwell and she hit the back of her head. Her breath jerked at staccato through her chest, making a funny motion as she tried to swallow air. "I want to help you," she stammered. "I know you must be frightened."

"_Shut up_," he snarled. It was confusing, hearing the voice coming from her lips while it echoed inside his head. She twisted uncomfortably in his grip as he squeezed her arm tighter, the metal digging into her skin.

"I'm here." She lowered her voice, speaking soothingly. "Please." She touched his metal arm with her free hand, but instead of scratching or clawing or pulling at it her fingers just danced across his knuckles; like soothing a frightened animal. The gentle touch felt wrong; intrusive.

_Breathe_, the voice commanded. A shuddering ripple worked through his chest, and his grip lessened as the resulting drop in blood pressure forced him to relax.

"One more," the woman in his grip commanded, with the same emphasis as the voice. Reflexively, he complied. Her watery smile nearly glowed. "Good," she praised. "Are you hurt?"

"Who are you?" he snarled. Or at least, he tried to. It came out in a croak that sounded pained even to him.

"Alice," she replied. "And you're Bucky." Her fingers slipped under the metallic grip on her arm, and gently pulled his hand away.

The Soldier stepped back from her like she'd tried to stab him. "That's not my name," he argued.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes; _Bucky_," she insisted, just like the other soldier who'd called hum Bucky, before he fell, before the Soldier pulled him from the river. "I want to help you."

"You're-" he started to contradict her, but couldn't quantify what she was. The little woman wasn't a Mission, and she wasn't carrying a weapon to help identify her as a threat.

"Yeah," she agreed. Her eyes watered and a weird laugh slipped past her lips as her eyes glittered in the harsh fluorescent light. "I can't believe you're really here," she managed to say through a choke of air.

He might have thought her mad from fear – targets sometimes laughed right before he put a bullet between their eyes – but nothing else about her posture indicated she held any fear for him.

Her hands fluttered like she didn't know what to do with them, moving like birds between them. She reached into her purse, and the Soldier struck out instantly, grabbing her wrist. He felt the bones of her wrist grind together but she barely winced. "It's okay," she said. He eased up just enough to let her pull out an envelope.

"What is that?" he demanded. _Not dangerous, _the voice insisted. He ground his teeth as he tried to sort of what was happening inside and outside of his head, but the voices were too similar.

"Just a letter to a friend I was going to mail." She scribbled out the original mailing address and wrote a new name and address. Quick as lightning, she tugged at a gold chain around her neck and slipped a copper pendant from around her neck and tucked it into the open envelope. "Now it's for you. It's my address and… something to help you remember," she tucked the lid of the envelope into the body and offered him the envelope. "I won't force you, but please, _please_…" She sucked in a breath. "I have all the answers you could want, but you need to _want_ them."

She appeared to be holding her breath as she waited for him to do something. His metal arm twitched as something shorted in the wiring – residual damage he'd yet to isolate from his combat on the helicarrier, or possibly from dropping into the river. Her eyes flicked to it; following the motion.

Her eyes hurt like his arm – feeling her stare felt like… another sensation that drifted just past comprehension, but tasted like blood again as he bit his tongue. She seemed to sense his confusion – better than Commander ever had; breaking past his iron façade to find the soil and plunge her hands deep in search of seeds.

_Breathe,_ the voice whispered. It sounded like comfort in the darkness.

"Breathe," the woman whispered. It sounded like secrets in the night.

His head ached as the inside and outside world clashed violently. He lashed out, his metal arm striking the wall and punching through the drywall; scattering dust over the woman's shoulder as he barely missed her face. He'd aimed for her face but changed directions as her eyes flashed with fear for the first time.

"_Stop_," he ordered, or had he begged? His head dropped slightly as he closed his eyes, hoping that by closing off one sensation he might ground himself.

He felt something press against his chest and grabbed at it with his free hand, just grazing her hand as she withdrew it and left the envelope in his reflexive grasp. "If… if you decide not to come – just drop that in the mail and it'll get back to me. Please don't just dump it in the trash – it's all I have."

He lifted his head slightly to look at her – so much smaller, caged between him and the wall but showing remarkably little fear. Her bare arm bore deep purple bruises already from his grip and her shoulders and hair may have been dusted with the light white powder of destroyed drywall, but her eyes only held concern now. Concern and… an emotion he couldn't identify. He'd seen it through scopes and windows as men looked at their wives and wives to their children.

"I'm going," she declared, brushing past him. Her arm brushed his and his head hurt again as he watched the deep purple – no, green; no, yellow; no, _gone_ – bruises of his aggression fade in the span of a few frantic breaths.

She caught him staring as she pulled open the door marked _staff only _on the other side. "Come back to me, Bucky." The door swung wide as she left him alone in the empty stairwell.

The Soldier stood in the stairwell, alone and irrationally afraid, until a door opening above him reminded him to move. He fled the museum, hand clenched tight around the envelope she'd pressed against his chest. He dipped his hat a little lower as a police car rolled past, and made a turn down a side-street, headed for the homeless shelter.

* * *

"More soup, dear?" Joy interrupted the Soldier's repeated twitchy motions as he reached for the envelope concealed in his pocket, thought better of pulling it out with witnesses around, and tried to come up with something else to do with his hands.

The Soldier shook his head gently and she nodded cheerily. "Alright dear, just come up if you change your mind." She paused before shuffling along. "You look a fright, dear; you sure I can't get you some coffee?"

"No," he said brusquely.

_Manners_, the voice chided.

The Soldier added a softer, "thank you."

_Better_, the voice added.

Joy nodded, mostly for herself, and muttered something that sounded like a familiar bible quote as she moved on to the next cot, still offering extra soup.

The Soldier lay down on the scratchy cot and waited, arms clenched around his middle. The voice, whispering soothing phrases inside his head, provided little comfort for his growing confusion. Now that he'd heard it on the outside of his body, he was certain that the voice was the same as that woman's.

_Alice_, she'd called herself.

_The Angel of Azzano_, the museum had called her.

He felt stuck on the edge of a cliff overlooking some great sea of memories. He could taste the salt of it on his tongue, reached for it, but still couldn't so much as wet his hands in it. Some connection to those memories still lingered out of reach but softly sang in the disturbed and overgrown weeds of his mind.

The upheaval of his comfort hurt both mentally and physically. He had been a good soldier; efficient, lethal, and spectacularly well-trained. Releasing his personal will to that of Commander was the definition of his 'comfort zone'; it removed the need for him to process feelings or even feel such civilian emotions like fear and regret. The ease of accepting command allowed the Soldier to focus on focusing.

Without the certainty of his training, and the stability provided by Commander and his team, the Soldier drifted aimlessly through the weedy confusion that grew untamed in his mind. These memories, sprouting faster and more furious by the day, rose in chaotic motion with no trellis of context to tame them.

The Soldier clutched the still-sealed envelope in his left hand, the paper crinkling softly in protest. He didn't dare open it. He didn't dare leave it sealed. He waited, hoping the voice would tell him what to do but it only maintained that he needed to _breathe_.

The lights clicked off, and he still waited.

Light snoring started in chorus.

He slipped out from underneath the paper-thin blanket and made his way towards the locker room. The few others still awake in the dark didn't bat an eye; he did this all the time. Everyone kept slightly odd hours.

This time, like all the times before, the Soldier locked the locker room door behind him. He did it to prevent accidental questions about his arm, but tonight he feared for far worse. The Soldier crouched beneath the high window in the room, holding up the envelope in the muted light of the street lamp outside.

He examined it for any evidence of a trigger or tracker, but nothing appeared obvious. He could see the outline of a slip of paper, and whatever pendant hung from the chain slipping around the bottom of the envelope, making one corner bulge and wrinkle.

_Fuck it_, the Soldier thought, and ripped open the top of the envelope.

Nothing happened.

He let out the breath he'd been holding.

The edge of a piece of paper dangled from the torn side. He withdrew it slowly and opened the letter, a single sheet of paper folded carefully along the middle. A flick of the finger opened it, and the Soldier tilted it towards the light to read the loopy script.

_Steve,_

_Is anyone picking up your mail for you? Tell Sam to stop being mad and answer my texts already. On that note, please get a real cell phone; Sam is a terrible secretary._

_-Al._

Mundane, and several thorough readings convinced him the letter wasn't hiding any secret code. He carefully re-folded the letter and set it aside.

He tipped the contents of the envelope into his hand. The woman's pendant clinked against his metal hand; a copper bullet hanging from a gold chain that glowed like warm sunlight. _Something to help you remember._ He rolled the slug with his hand and found some scratches on the side. Holding it up and tilting it slowly until the crude engraving caught the light.

_Alice Shaw_

A flood of memories – some warm, some painful – assaulted his brain in the span of a second as they grew violently to fill an empty space.

"_It's a bullet with your name on it," he explained. "You know how they say that somewhere, there's a bullet with your name on it?" He pointed at it briefly. "Well, what do you think the odds are of there being two bullets out there?" He tapped his head knowingly. "Gotta think smart out here."_

_Alice burst out laughing, holding the round in her lithe fingers, still rolling it from end to end. "I'm fairly sure that's not how it works," she chuckled._

The Soldier groaned in pain as a violent stab attacked his gut. It tasted like… fear.

_Her eyes weren't all there, and a heavy rock joined the growing pile in his stomach. "Bucky…" she whispered, pressing a hand to her chest. "It-" she coughed, more blood staining her lips. "It didn't work."_

"_What didn't work, sweetheart?" he asked softly. She pulled at a cord around her neck, tangled around her dog tags. Bucky helped her pull it free, though from the weight of it he knew what it would be before he saw it. The glittering round mocked him in the light, the crudely scratched channels of __**Alice Shaw**__ filled with blood._

_He curled her hands around the bullet, clenching tightly. "No, it __worked__. You're not gonna die, so the bullet today didn't have your name on it. Right?" he encouraged, trying to convince himself as well._

Where that memory grew, others followed.

Her face as she looked up at snow.

Her face in the warm glow of a fire, her eyes catching the light in a blaze of cinnamon.

A wicked grin as she peered around the side of a horse.

The touch of her hand, soft as soft could be.

Her face.

Her touch.

Her voice.

_Breathe_.

**End of Act I**

**.**

**.**

**.**

* * *

**A/N: **let's ask the question: "will Aria ever leave us without a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter?". It's what keeps you coming back, isn't it?

That's the last of the Three Day Fun-Fest! I hope you enjoyed getting three chapters in three days! Our next Act is: **Remembrance**. I'm hoping to have something to post around April 12, but don't hold me to that. Act 2 is shaky right now and needs some work.

I can't fucking wait to stop referring to Bucky as "the Soldier" and Alice as "the woman". Blech.

I will admit I'm having some trouble writing because the music playlists that inspired me for WIAS just aren't working for this story. Leave me some music suggestions that you think pair well with RITD in the awesome and super-long review you're about to write!

I LOVE my reviewers: Carolain. Black, Lucy Jacob, TimeLordsRule, AquaBluey, Momochan77, RainbowLabs, Sanguinary Tide, LadyGely92, CullenMia, PistolHattersButtercup, bananaraberrybat, and SomebodyWhoCares!

**PLEASE REVIEW (more reviews means faster updates; nothing's more motivating than constant feedback)**


	11. Jumping Into the Foxhole

**Act II: Remembrance**

* * *

The Soldier rolled an apple experimentally in his left hand, trying to feel more than just the pressure input the arm provided. The thick leather glove he wore over it didn't help much either. He practiced this motion in an attempt to fill the void inside usually filled by cleaning and disassembling weapons over and over again.

"Coffee, dear?" Joy asked as the tray in her shaky hands tilted dangerously to one side.

His voice barely rose above a whisper. "Thank you." the soldier accepted the hot concoction that pretended to be coffee. He sipped at it gently, letting it burn his tongue as Joy smiled, and let the odd sensation of a cold nose breeze past.

He pulled at the gold chain around his neck until the bullet teetered on the collar of his shirt. While the color and the tricks of the light it liked to play on his eyes could have been seen as mocking, the Soldier found it oddly encouraging. It served as a reminder that he had found something real, something that held scraps of memory up to the light on a trellis of meaning. Someone.

He didn't know her like a mission – where they lived, name, date of birth. He thought of her face and knew that she looked like _Zhelaniye_.

Longing.

"Should we expect you tonight, dear?" Joy asked, pushing her thick glasses further up her nose. She had circled back around after distributing coffee, checking in with the usuals.

"I don't think so," he replied, standing and hoisting his bag over one shoulder. "I'm staying with… someone else."

Joy surprised him, taking his gloved left hand in her ancient and wrinkly hands. She beamed up at him, easily nearly two feet shorter than him, as she had hunched far over in her old age. "God keep you, dear." She patted his hand and released it, moving on without another word.

The Soldier ducked out into the sunshine, taking a deep breath as his lungs searched for a flowery scent that never appeared. Instead, he got a lungful of exhaust as a bus rolled past. He coughed irritably, but found some satisfaction in the fact that his cracked rib seemed to have finally healed.

He pulled the envelope out of his pocket, more wrinkle than paper now for all the times he'd pulled it out just to stare at it, and flipped it over to re-read the rough directions he'd scribbled there. The shelter had a map of the area with soup kitchens and restaurants that offered free meals helpfully marked out.

He convinced himself, as took off North down the shadowy side of the sidewalk, that surveillance was his ultimate goal. He needed to better understand the woman whose voice matched the one in his head, he reasoned as he cut through a cemetery to route under the Beltway's nearest overpass. The woman could be dangerous, he thought as he stopped at the sign at the end of her long gravel drive; _Foxhole Barns._

The Soldier got as close as he dared to the buildings set deep in the open valley. If the woman had intended to create a property that was difficult to survey, she'd done a great job. He found himself wishing for a decent sniper-scope just to get a good look. As it was, he had to rely on a cheap set of binoculars. He settled into the underbrush at the top of the closest hill still covered by trees and waited.

A handful of cars drove in and out every day, some repeats, and some only very occasional visitors. From the stances and the hand gestures, the Soldier could determine that almost all of her visitors were current or former military. No weapons, though; of that he could be completely certain. Every man and woman that walked through the doors at Foxhole Barns did so unarmed.

It took a little longer than expected for the woman to make an appearance outside. She stepped out of the office at the end of a long day, reaching down to pull up on the edge of her boots and shaking her ankle like one of them didn't fit right. She stood straight, flipped a long braid of hair back over her shoulder, and struck out across the driveway towards the large barn.

The Soldier checked his watch. Based on the amount of time he'd seen a farmhand take in the barn the day before, he calculated he had at least an hour to investigate the woman's home before she returned. With the day's light swiftly receding he jogged across the open valley, his attention firmly fixed on the barn doors in case the woman reappeared.

Cricket song filled the air as the last light of day faded and the Soldier slipped into the woman's home through an upstairs window. He didn't need to turn on any lights to see fairly well; the apartment level of the two-story building let the moonlight in through large windows and it reflected off of light cream walls, giving the room an otherworldly lighting.

_Kitchen. Living Room. Bedroom and bathroom. Office. _The large building couldn't be more than three years old, and remained minimalistic while keeping warm elements like large blankets draped over an overstuffed couch and thick white curtains diffusing the moonlight.

_Office_. The only distinct room aside from the bedroom and bathroom, it was surprisingly small compared to the other spaces. Shelves on the walls remained mostly bare, with a selection of books occupying only a few shelves that were otherwise empty but clean. She had a small desk with two small drawers pushed close to the window. _This is not a frequently used space_, he thought. _So why have it?_

Her desk drawers were locked but proved to be no real barrier. One contained two passports – one American, one Icelandic. The other drawer contained a pistol and a box of bullets missing a handful of rounds. _Clean, well-serviced, kept unloaded_, he determined as he checked the weapon. Not one to turn down an easy weapon, the Soldier loaded the pistol after he was certain it wasn't a trap of some kind.

A weight pressed against his calf and he started, swinging the pistol down while switching off the safety.

A ginger cat wound around his ankles, meowing for attention.

"That's Julian," a voice informed him as a light switched on from outside the office. The Soldier instantly pointed the pistol towards the door and found the woman standing there, seemingly indifferent to the weapon pointed at her head. "He's the mouser around here. You've never met him."

She slowly withdrew her hand from the light switch to let her hands hang loosely at her sides. "Do you remember me?" she asked.

_Zhelaniye._

"I don't know you," he said sharply, defensively. His hand tightened around the grip.

"Can I have my pendant back?" she asked. "If you leave… I just want to still have it." She held out a hand expectantly.

He pulled at the chain around his neck until the copper appeared, glimmering in the light. The bullet swung lightly with the motion of removing it from around his neck, and he slowly extended his arm for her to take it though he did not lower the pistol. She barely glanced at the weapon.

"Who are you?" his stomach churned as he asked the question – asking a question meant reprimand, meant re-stabilization, meant a return to the void. But the woman wasn't Commander. He wasn't on-mission. He was between spaces, reaching for memory blindly.

Zhelaniye slipped the chain over her head and fluffed her hair to let the chain settle against the back of her neck. "You know me as Lieutenant Alice Shaw."

_That's just Nurse Shaw, don't mind her. _The memory hit followed by a strong scent of weeds and an animal musk. He shook his head, trying to clear the interruption to his senses. The woman's calculating stare felt like scalpels on his skin; uncomfortable things that made him snarl a threat.

She ignored it. "You can put my gun down; I won't hurt you."

Something had changed between the museum and her home. Where she had been anxious and jittery and somewhere between laughing and weeping in the stairwell, now she had come into a calm place that left her on much better tactical standing than he'd been expecting. "You're dangerous."

She raised an eyebrow. "What makes you say that?"

Her calm demeanor disturbed him. Her eyes didn't wander or flit away with nerves. Her even tone betrayed the meticulous calculation she ran on every word before it passed her lips. He knew her kind: deadly; just like him. He should have felt better about being the only one in the room with a weapon. He did not.

He jerked the pistol to the left, indicating she needed to move out of the way; her form blocking the door and his easiest path of exit made him distinctly uncomfortable.

She looked at him dead in the eyes as her expression transformed into something colder than coming out of the void. "I am not a thing you can order around." Zhelaniye stood her ground. "You are in my home as my guest, even though you broke in, and I won't accept such behavior." Such a slight thing, with lips that seemed to naturally turn down at the corners and a neck so thin he imagined he could wrap his hand entirely around it, should not be showing the defiance of a lioness.

Her hands hung loosely at her sides, lacking the nervous fidget of prey looking for a weapon or a way out. Her jaw tilted high, baring her weak spot but openly daring him to reach for it. He'd never known anyone to stare down the barrel of a gun like it threatened them about as much as a feather duster.

_Is she dangerous?_ The memory of a conversation over coffee he could nearly taste on his tongue teased at the edges of his memory.

_That depends on your definition of dangerous._

She was important. Her face and her voice and the ire of her tongue inspired more coherent memories than anything else he'd tried since he'd come out of the river.

"What'll it be, soldier?" she asked, her tone clipped. She tossed her head as a thread of hair caught at her cheek and her eyes flashed in the light that slipped in through the open door, setting off a flicker of cinnamon fire. His chest constricted painfully and a faint taste of apple burst in his mouth.

The Soldier desperately needed to know how to connect the memories and sensations that tried to bury him deeper by the hour. This woman seemed to be his best chance.

He lowered the pistol and set it on her desk.

The ice in her eyes melted and she offered a measured smile. "Come on," she beckoned, "I think we need cocoa."

* * *

A/N: Alice has the best you-better-do-it Mom face.

The secret to great homemade hot chocolate is to mix the cocoa powder with a little water and heat that while stirring to a syrup before adding milk. No clumps!

I have to thank everyone who sent in all the great music suggestions! It helped me get through my block and ultimately helped me to greatly improve my details for Act 2.

This is a little earlier than my estimate because – I got poisoned! I've got a gluten intolerance and some wackadoodle thought he knew better than doctors. BUT WHATEVER BRAH it forced me to take some time off my feet.

I love my reviewers! TrilbyBard, CarolainBlack, AquaBluey, Bee, SunnySides, bananaraberrybat, TimeLordsRule, Momochan77, Guest, PistolHattersButtercup, Sanguinary Tide, Lucy Jacob (who won the unofficial get-me-inspired-by-music contest and got a sneak peek of this chapter!), TikiKiki, IvoryDarkWolf, xRaspberryx, (another) Guest, (yet another) Guest, Mia, Rainbowlabs, Guest (#4), Guest (#5), Thorny Thestral, TheRealTayler13, nekokairi, Lemontea-addict, Hxnnie, stars that listen, AlexShah, Guest (#6), and Foxy!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	12. Touching Memory

Nothing about his position in the room felt right. Zhelaniye had indicated he should sit on a barstool at the kitchen's large island while she started making something hot to drink. He slouched uncomfortably over the marble surface, glancing around for something he could use as a weapon if need be. _Knife block's close_, he thought. His gaze also sometimes wandered to the closed office door not ten steps away, with a clean and loaded pistol just sitting on her desk.

Zhelaniye stood at the stove collecting an assortment of pans and ingredients. She tapped a finger against her chin, thinking out loud. "Cocoa, milk, vanilla, salt, espresso, and sugar… I think that's all I need."

She took a small pan and added a bit of water from the sink before setting it on the range, turning a red dial to turn on the gas heat. She added cocoa powder liberally to the water without bothering to measure amounts. She stirred at the slurry with a whisk until the chocolate paste appeared smooth.

The Soldier waited for her to speak, to offer something in guidance, but she stayed silent. She placed one of her larger pans on the stove and transferred the chocolate paste there, adding milk as she pleased.

"Tell me what you know," he ordered, having grown impatient as Zhelaniye puttered around her kitchen.

"You can do better than that." She shot him a cold, angry look and his tongue tried to tie itself in a knot. "I can't help you if you don't ask the right questions; I don't know where to start. I can't give you directions if I don't know where you are on the road." She screwed the cap back on the milk jug and left it on the counter, not bothering to walk the three steps to the fridge to put it away properly.

Her utter disregard for her safety in his presence continued to confound him. Didn't she know he could snap her neck in under a second if he wanted to? She glanced at him as she stirred the milk, adding various other ingredients she'd gathered as she waited for it to warm on the stove, and the surgical calculation he found there told him that yes; she did know. She just didn't seem to mind.

"I…" The words caught in his throat, trapped there from waiting so long to be used. He frowned. He didn't have the words for how he felt, only this growing frustration and anger and a headache that never seemed to go away. His questions remained of the ambiguous sort; a general 'who' and 'when' and 'what' that couldn't be wrapped into the shape of a reasonable sentence.

Zhelaniye sighed, mostly to herself it seemed, and grabbed a ladle from the drawer to her right. "I have a memory, of a sunset in my childhood." She scooped rich, brown liquid from the pot into a white mug. "I remember the blazing red and orange my family would watch and applaud like a performance."

She set down the first mug, full near to the brim, and grabbed a second mug. "I remember the taste of the children's Flintstone-shaped chewable vitamins we would eat just before we went outside to watch sundown. I remember the smell of the dry, dusty soil around my house as they built a development up around us and the sunscreen I hardly wore."

She stopped just short of overfilling the second mug, and left the ladle in the pot. "I remember the feeling of concrete drain pipes against my hands and that loose soil underfoot as I played in the construction area."

She turned to look at him, and he could almost see the memory in her face; the warmth, the peace. "I remember the sound of cicadas, singing in the twilight."

She slid one cup of cocoa across the counter, leaving it within his reach but not forcing it on him. "If I want to think about that summer, I can start with any of those senses and it'll always bring me back to the whole memory." She ticked them off on her fingers. "Orange sunset, chewy vitamins, soil and sunscreen, concrete drain pipes, and cicadas."

"Five senses," he managed to grind out something that sounded like words.

"Exactly," she confirmed. "What do you remember?"

"There's nothing to remember." The weeds that teased like memory trapped coherent thought and refused to develop into real memories. They mocked him with promises of meaning and never reached fulfillment.

"You wouldn't be here if that were true." She tilted her head a little, examining something in his face. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't have something you're holding onto."

He didn't get to know things beyond _weapon_ and _bomb_ and _stealth_ and _death_. He didn't get to see faces and feel emotion and attachment. The Soldier needed to remain sharp and maintain constant vigilance.

But when he looked at her face he felt a rush of emotion like _fear_ and _joy_ and _comfort_ all mashed together and stirred with a fork. If he focused on the fear he could taste blood. If he focused on the joy he could hear a chime of laughter. If he focused on the comfort, he could taste mint.

_Knowing_ things had started all of this defiance. The Soldier couldn't remember a time when he'd felt so much so often. It hurt to feel, and his body seemed to rebel against his brain by crippling him with sensation at the most inopportune times. A small part of him wanted to return to the silence and the certainty in the time before he knew so many things.

If he had anything to compare it to, it would have to be the difference between searching for a target in the middle of the night with a twenty-year-old scope and one eye blind, versus standing in front of the target in broad daylight.

Standing so close to Zhelaniye, he knew now why he thought of her as such. It wasn't that she looked like longing, it was that… he _felt_ that when he looked at her. An isolated emotion that grew from the other memories struggling to grow in the dark places of his mind, there could still be no mistake. Her face and the downward turn of her lips and the tilt of her chin inspired a longing to dive deeper into the weedy underbrush of developing emotions and memories and just lie there, watching the sun break through the green canopy in dappled waves.

She stood at the island, well within reach, somehow unafraid of his presence. Even Commander looked at him with a nervous calculation; a twitchy presence that waited for him to lash out, to fight, to destroy. This woman, this tiny slip of a creature who called herself Alice and made cocoa for the deadly soldier seated in her kitchen, looked at him like he belonged there.

He looked away from her eager, expectant eyes and took a hesitant sip of the hot chocolate, steeling himself for an inevitable rush of emotion or memory. His eyes widened slightly as nothing came, and he looked up at Alice with surprise. He'd never tasted anything like it, and somehow he was certain of that.

"If I know what's wrong, I can help more effectively." She smiled knowingly, her lips curling up behind her mug. "You've never had that before. Chocolate in hot water, stirred about in a lumpy mess maybe – but not _that_."

The feeling in his gut frightened him. It seemed to satisfy her, knowing these things and directing his path, but the feeling it elicited frightened him. The new-ness of the sensation that warmed his chest and pulled at his stomach left him feeling vulnerable, but had somehow addressed other vulnerabilities.

Could it really be that simple? Could the longing he felt when looking at her face be the key to the door he'd tried over and over to break down by force? He would need to trust her, trust that he could put his memories in Alice's hands.

"I knew him," he croaked. The Soldier tried drowning the worry in his stomach with cocoa but only burnt his tongue.

"Who?" Alice asked, leaning a little closer to hear his soft voice.

"My Mission; I _knew _him." He looked up at her with the same pain in his chest as when he had looked up at Commander and uttered those words, the same hesitation and fear in his voice. "And I know you."

There.

He'd gotten it out.

His shoulders tensed and he lowered his head as he waited for a reprimand or a strike to the face that never came.

A pale hand appeared in his downcast vision and gently touched his right hand. The fingers tucked into his palm and the thumb stroked the back of his hand. The gentle touch captured his attention for a few seconds until he followed the arm up to Alice's face.

"Hello there." She smiled, and this time it reached her eyes like it hadn't before, and he just hadn't realized it. "I missed you."

With a breath of bravery, the tiniest step down the path Alice seemed to be offering, he gently squeezed her fingers in return. She looked so damned earnest, it hurt to watch her expression change from open and glowing to slightly guilty.

"You know," she started, tightening her grip a bit on his hand in an attempt to be encouraging, "I think Steve would be happy to hear you're alright."

"_No_," he instantly disagreed, pulling away from her grip. He stood from the island, backing away. He couldn't stomach the idea of going through the rollercoaster of sensation and emotion a second time.

Alice frowned, following his retreat around the island. "I know it's scary, but you've already come this far; just trust me?"

He moved toward the large living room windows, already examining the latch to see how quickly he could open it and be gone.

"Listen." Alice stopped following, clearly understanding her advance propelled his retreat. "You came to me because… well, I'm not really sure why you decided to come, but I'm happy you did. I want you to get all the answers you want, but I can only give you answers for a small portion of it. Steve," she held up the cell phone, "he can give you the rest. So I'd like to call him."

She stared, waiting for him to say something. The Soldier felt ill. "What if…" he swallowed his words. If he said no again, would she call anyway? What if her request turned out to be a poorly concealed command? What if he'd chosen wrong, and he'd just exchanged one Commander for another?

"Hey," Alice said softly, setting the phone down, "please relax; I'm gonna have a heart attack just looking at you. I won't force you to do anything – I've _never_ forced you to do anything."

"If I want to leave?" he rumbled.

"Then you leave." She shrugged, but he didn't miss the flash of hurt in her eyes. "I promise no one will follow you. I won't even tell anyone you were here." As painful as it seemed to be for her to say it, her face read as resolute. She meant it.

Maybe it was the lingering chemical imbalance that came from a rash decision to trust a small woman with an unusual temperament. Maybe it was a remnant of a memory of a better time when giving someone your word actually meant something. Maybe it was oxygen deprivation from holding his breath while trying to make a decision.

"Do it."

The decision was made.

He turned away from her to look out over the moonlit valley as she picked up the phone and hit a fast series of commands on the touchscreen. She thoughtfully left it on speakerphone for transparency's sake as it went to voicemail. _You've reached Sam the Man; I'm not here, leave a message._

A flash of light on a distant hill overlooking the valley drew his attention from the grounds and he frowned. Alice's voice dimmed slightly to the further edges of his senses as he tried to focus on the light.

"Sam, It's me. No bullshit this time; call me back. It's important." Alice tossed the phone onto the island with an exasperated sigh. "Of all the times to still be holding a grudge, now is not the time."

She joined him at the window on his left. "What is it?" she asked, leaning around him to look out the window. "Is it a raccoon? They-" The window exploded as her eye burst into a red mist.

There wasn't time to react.

She fell to the floor as the back of her head spread out in a bloody halo, mixed with bits of brain matter.

The Solder dropped to the floor as her body fell with a flat _whulmph_.

He examined her only long enough to confirm that she was, in fact, absolutely dead. The hole straight through her eye to the back of her skull confirmed it.

The hole in the window and the hole in the woman's head before she'd fallen provided two points on a line, making an easy trajectory line to the source. The Soldier retrieved Alice's pistol from her desk and checked the chamber out of habit.

He didn't need to think about what he'd just lost; he had a hunt. All the feelings and sensations dulled to their normal levels as he took off through the valley, following the trajectory back to the sniper who'd failed to flee fast enough.

"Why did you kill that woman?" he snarled.

"Wasn't… aiming… for her." It was awfully hard for the sniper to speak with the Soldier's boot on his throat, but he managed. "Hail… Hydra," he gurgled.

The Soldier put a bullet through his eye. _An eye for an eye._ The usual satisfaction of target elimination never came. His senses sharpened and the periphery of the world advanced again.

Going back to the farmhouse hurt.

What the hell was he supposed to do now? The thought repeated without end as he walked back across the valley. He didn't have a reason for returning, but he returned to the house. The Soldier walked up the wide, solid stairs to the apartment over the office slowly, the heavy step of his boots echoing through an empty space.

Alice's body lay like perverse abstract art on the new wood floors. She lay surrounded by a pool of blood, not moving, not breathing. Looking at her laying there, he could taste the iron in the air.

But it smelled like a memory of earth and steel.

_One._

Maybe, he wondered, she could still be useful. He crouched close, taking careful note of the way her hair had absorbed some of the blood from the floor, and the awkward splay of her arms.

_Blessed are you, Lord God._ He could feel the words on his tongue, spoken when this had happened before. Before? Before had been different. Before hadn't been in a house, but on something steel. Before… he frowned in concentration, trying to force the memory to bloom from bud to blossom by force.

Before… he'd touched her shoulder.

_Two._

It felt like what was next. It felt like the next step on a series of steps leading to a place he needed to be. The Soldier reached for her shoulder, the metal of his arm whirring as the motor switched from high-power to a lower actuator designed for precise motion.

A hard gasp of air burst through her chest.

He threw himself backwards as the corpse reanimated, the force of the breath lifting the body's chest from the ground. This was no flicker of response from a brain that hasn't realized it had died – the woman's body rolled onto her side, pushing up with wobbly arms into a seated position.

She wiped a streak of blood from her face with an arm, smearing blood everywhere. She reached up and pushed the back of her skull into place.

"God _damn_ I hate that!" she barked, truly seeming irritated more than pained. Before his very eyes he could see her skin stitching back together, harsh bleeding lines yielding to deep pink scars, fading to light lines, then altogether gone. Her eye seemed to evolve from nowhere, the dark iris filling with pigment as the hazy white of death receded. "Do I have brain in my hair? Please tell me I don't have brain in my hair."

He grabbed her close, running his hands through her hair and looking for the gaping hole that had disappeared only a moment before. Her hair was bloody, but no wounds could be found, like an open skull as evidence of a high-velocity bullet.

"I guess I should explain-" she laughed nervously and started to babble about _mutations_ and _factors_ and _acceleration_ but the Soldier was still searching. The metal plates of his arm snagged in her hair and she yelped in protest. "Hey now," she said, pulling the offending appendage out of her hair. "Be careful with that; I just put it back."

He pressed his forehead to hers, trying to reassure himself that he wasn't hallucinating. He'd never had something taken away and gotten it back again. She smelled like a field of clover.

_One._

"Bucky," she tried to get his attention, her voice calm and soothing.

_Two._

Her hands touched his face, forcing his head back so she could look at his face. Her thumbs stroked his cheeks and it felt like it might be familiar.

_Three._

"I'm alright – I promise. But…" she pulled something wet out of her hair and let it drop to the floor. "I think we need a new plan."

* * *

A/N: I couldn't leave you with another Alice-got-shot cliffhanger; y'all know better now. The only shock was to Bucky.

These chapters are starting to get longer as I get deeper into the content, so honestly you'll be looking at chapters that are consistently longer. This is also early, but I really wanted to fork it over, even though the next chapter is only half done, and the chapter after that is about two paragraphs long. I have no willpower.

Thank you all for your thoughtful words about my glutening! I'm doing much better already.

I love my reviewers! Momochan77, ghostofthenight99, SunnySides, Sanguinary Tide, TrilbyBard, AlexShah, CarolainBlack, Lucy Jacob, LucillaNovaDreyar, stars that listen, nekokairi, xRaspberryx, RainbowLabs, Lemontea-addict, and AquaBluey!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	13. Reaching, Seeking

Alice pulled something wet out of her hair and let it drop to the floor. "I think we need a new plan... Okay – give me a few seconds to get my head working properly."

Not two minutes reanimated, body barely regaining the lifelike pink flush in her cheeks, Alice had clearly lost her mind. He'd never seen a mind change gears to tilt back towards productivity quite so quickly after being shot. How, he wondered, had she shed it so quickly? How, he wondered, had apparently dying passed her over entirely in effect?

The only conclusion he could come to as she wiped blood from her face took the form of another question: _How many times had this happened?_

"I need to leave."

"What? No – we can figure this out, just give me a second."

"This was a mistake; I shouldn't have come."

"You sit your ass down and give me two whole minutes to think!" she barked.

He hovered in place, half between standing and sitting. Her voice, _the_ voice, still inspired the instinctive response to obey. His newfound freedom kept him standing. "Hydra won't stop hunting. There's no quarter for stray dogs."

"Okay," she started to run a hand through her hair and seemed to think better of it. "You want to get out of dodge, we can do that…" She chewed on her lip. "I think I've got an idea; wait here while I grab some stuff." She stood with barely a wobble, dusting off her pants even as she dripped blood onto the floor.

The Soldier stood in place as she quietly closed the bedroom door, and stayed still until he heard the shower run. Now effectively alone, he was free to investigate the rest of her apartment without fear of further surprise.

Her walls held no photos of family or friends, only sparse art used to evoke a feeling that the apartment was lived in. The floors, save for a large pool of blood and a trail now leading to the bedroom, were immaculate; like a home ready to be sold.

The home lacked a sense of physical attachment; of the normal human habit to collect mementos, to hold on to ownership of space and time, and to preserve for the future. Blankets and drapes created the perfect atmosphere: warm, comfortable, but a carefully composed front that hid a bitter secret. She lived like someone dead already.

The realization tasted bitter. The Soldier frowned, focusing on the sensation. It tasted bitter, a little earthy and… plant-like. _One. _The taste preceded a ringing in his ears, and a quiet, pained memory of a whisper. _Ever cleaned a fish? _The Soldier sucked in a breath and it smelled like sulfur. _Two. Three._ He clenched his hands, and he could feel the slippery run of blood on his hand.

But that wasn't a memory. That was now. Drawn out of the memory by the sound of Alice's pipes rattling as the shower turned off, the Soldier moved back from the pool of blood, leaving bloody boot prints on her otherwise perfect floor.

He pushed the bedroom door open as Alice pulled a loose shirt over her head. "Yeah?" she asked, curiously unconcerned with the intrusion. She looped damp hair up into a sloppy bun on the top of her head with a quick twist of the wrist, hiding the healed mark on the back of her scalp that indicated she'd been recently deceased.

"You've been shot before," he declared. Her blasé attitude being only the first of many indicators.

She sat down on her bed, pulling on thick socks. "Yeah. You remember?"

He shook his head, but paused. "Tastes like… bitter plants. Ever cleaned a fish?"

"Ah," Alice's head bobbed as she grabbed sneakers. "The taste is probably Yarrow. I was shot in the chest and it grazed my lung. Scary as hell for both of us."

She stood up, tapping the toes of her sneakers on the floor. "Could you do me a favor and get my duffel bag from the cedar chest behind the sofa?"

He turned, finding the trunk but also unable to open it because of the large ginger cat sitting on a folded blanket over the lid. The cat stared at him accusingly. Alice had called it _Julian. _If it had a name, she likely wouldn't appreciate him just shoving it out of the way.

"Never mind - it's in my closet!" she called from the bedroom.

The cat would live to glare another day.

"I'm almost done," Alice called from her bedroom, and the Soldier could hear her shoving a few articles into the bag. With the perimeter secured and the only lingering threat eliminated, the Soldier found himself with nothing better to do than wait for her to finish. As such, he sat at one of the high bar stools at her large kitchen island and waited.

"Sonofa – where is it?" she grumbled loudly from the room, slamming a few drawers before evidently finding her prize with a victorious "ah-hah!"

Her repeated mutterings and shouts made the Soldier twitch in his seat. He stood from the stool unable to contain the growing nervous energy inside his chest and searched out a useful task.

_Gather supplies, _he thought. _For survival._ The modern kitchen concealed a surprising number of drawers and cabinets, and the Soldier took his time opening the doors and pulling at handles, reveling in the act of discovery.

As he started to gather shelf-stable foods from her pantry, Alice appeared and took a bag of rice out of his hands to set it back on the shelf. "We don't have far to go; there's no need for that."

The Soldier left his hands open, still shaped in a rough estimate of the bag of rice as if he still held the weight there. His mind rebelled, as contradictory commands always had a habit of creating that reaction, but he couldn't make himself reach for the rice again. He let his hands fall as Alice finished her rough packing procedure by shoving two bottles of water into her bag, followed by a few pieces of fruit.

She caught him staring and her cheeks flushed. "I get snacky when I drive; doesn't mean we need to bring a lot."

He had to hand it to Alice; she'd packed up and rolled out of her barn in under ten minutes. And that included a shower to rinse the last of her loose brains out of her hair. She'd gathered very little – the dual passports, one change of clothes, and very little else. An outside observer would be hard-pressed to note that she'd taken anything at all.

She gave one final glance around the apartment as she slung the duffel's strap over her shoulder, pausing only to prop open a window for the opinionated cat. "Okay," she declared, "let's go."

She didn't lock the door.

She didn't look back.

They didn't take Alice's flashy white SUV, but a junky old green truck that seemed best for hauling hay around and running muck to compost piles. It smelled like manure in the cab, but the Soldier had spent time in worse spaces.

"Bucky," she broke the silence as she turned the engine over; addressing him by that name in a way that sounded unsure. She seemed to forget the rest of her question as he glanced at her.

"I'm not him," he replied.

"I know," she bobbed her head, "but I don't have anything else to call you, so that'll have to do." She checked her mirrors as she headed down the long driveway as if she expected to see more assassins pursuing. "So – what's next?"

The question didn't make sense to him. "Driving."

"No, _after_ that. After," she waved her hand vaguely before returning it to the steering wheel. "After a safe-house, after," more vague hand-waving, "we get this figured out."

For someone who seemed to make a habit of talking a lot, Alice could be difficult to understand. "You don't make a lot of sense."

She sighed. "And you're incredibly unhelpful."

They drove in silence through the darkness as it thickened into the night. The truck no longer had a radio – it seemed like it had been ripped out with some violence. The truck's natural acoustics – a rattling engine, the wind over the cab that whistled against the windows, and a squeaky suspension that protested at every pothole – provided the only sounds until Alice groaned, slapping her forehead with the palm of her hand. "Damn!"

"What?" he asked sharply. Asking questions still tasted like acid on his tongue but either the flavor was starting to dilute with the thrill of excitement, or it was starting to fade altogether, bit by bit.

She shook her head. "I forgot my phone – it's probably still on the counter."

"Better not to have it." Cell phones made perfect little portable trackers. Just too easy to turn on cameras and microphones and handy-dandy GPS units.

She sighed and her head dipped forward with a long, slow blink. The Soldier observed her off behavior with a keen eye as Alice's head tilted down and snapped up slightly.

_Exhaustion. _The other symptoms may have been missing, but something in her expression read as acutely and unavoidably exhausted. "You need to sleep," he commented shortly.

"I can go five whole days without sleep," she replied. "I'm fine. It's only another two hours or so."

He thoroughly disagreed and didn't much appreciate the idea of ending up ass over teakettle in a ditch. "You took a bullet. Tends to change things."

She thought about it, blinking so slowly it almost seemed like she was falling asleep at that moment. "I guess they wouldn't like if I knocked on the door at three in the morning." She shook her head and slapped a cheek briefly to try and force some energy back into her skin. "I need you to talk to me; to keep me awake."

What an absurd request. "I don't." Talking held no occupancy in his arsenal.

"Yeah, well if you don't want to end up in a ditch you'd better start. Ask me something."

The Soldier wracked his brain, trying to decide on a single memory that deserved the first answer. "I remember new things. But they… don't match." He frowned. "It's hard to focus."

She nodded as if what he'd said somehow made sense. "Smell is our strongest memory sense. Is there a smell you've been remembering?"

The words poured from his mouth, disjointed and disconnected.

_Mud._

_Grass._

_Musk._

_Sulfur._

Alice's lighter tone, slightly grated by fatigue, filled in the holes of the memory like a putty. She took a rough stone, purged from the earth, and whispered it smooth as she cradled it in those small hands.

_Strangling Rain._

_Herbal Fields._

_War Horses._

_Smoking Gunpowder._

The Soldier expanded to tastes, of the confusion wrapped around them. _Apples_, he asked with hesitation. He could not have missed the upturn of her lips as she responded, flicking the turn signal to get off the highway. _Christmas campfire._

A moderately well-lit parking lot wrapped around the low, long motel, but Alice mercifully pulled into a dark corner at the far end of the lot. "Okay," she said gently. "I'm going to get us a place to bed down. If you aren't here when I get back, I'll know you decided not to trust me, and I'll understand. _But_," she emphasized, leaning slightly over the console, "You've trusted me up to now."

Alice held his gaze intently, but he could just barely see the flex of her pupil against the deep, dark brown of the surrounding retina. "Okay so," she said abruptly, leaning back and opening the door, "hopefully you'll be here when I get back." She paused before closing the door, adding "my car, too," for good measure. She walked just slower than a brisk walk towards the motel's office.

A final flicker of blonde hair waved goodbye as she entered the office, and the world seemed a little darker without it. Without the beacon of her bright presence, the shadows rose with menacing grace; the stars could not find him there.

Silence began to press against the sides of the truck. It sounded like ice crackling against steel and tasted like the coldest breath. The Soldier could hear his heart rushing in his ears; an unceasing tide of blood that could only bring death.

He took a shuddering breath, without the voice's command he wanted anyway, hoping it could steady him. He tasted his fear in the air, combined with some bitter cleanser from the last time the truck got cleaned. He looked around the cab and caught the glimmer of light glancing off the keys - right where Alice had left them, sitting in the driver's seat.

_Run_, his impulses cried. _She left the keys so you could run_. It was almost an invitation.

An invitation to what? To take the truck, surely, but to what end? Could he return to Hydra and ask to return to the void? Could he flee to the ends of the Earth, clutching his scattered thoughts and memories and clumsily attempt to find reason in the patterns they made when he held them to the light? How certain could he be that the world at large would be any more accepting of his presence than a woman who stopped a bullet meant for his heart with her eye?

Further panicked contemplation was interrupted by motion across the lot. Alice emerged from the office, twirling a key card nervously in her fingers like he might spin a knife. She yanked open the truck door a little harder than necessary, climbing up and into the cab with a swift hop.

"They took cash, but they didn't like it," she announced, tossing the key card onto the dash. She didn't comment on his continued presence; like it happened to be a given. She turned the engine over and pulled the vehicle over to the far section of the motel and swung into a spot. "This is us."

The motel room's door would provide only the barest protection against intruders, and examination of the locks would only keep a determined toddler out for three minutes at most, but the Soldier wasn't in a position to be choosy. The room looked better than most ratty safe-houses, with two double beds in garishly outdated colors, a small television, and a flickering light leading the way to the back bathroom.

Alice moved slowly, setting her bag down on her bed and spinning in place to sit heavily on the stiff mattress. "Wow," she sighed, "this is really uncomfortable." Her head flopped to the side and she appraised his stiff position in the middle of the room. "You should shower."

He didn't answer, but his silence indicated a negative.

"You've got blood on you," she added, gesturing to her own head.

"Not much." He had absolutely no interest in stripping off all forms of bodily protection in that horribly vulnerable room.

She made an amused noise. "Oh yes, the _amount_ of blood makes a huge difference."

A car drove past, a little too close for his comfort and the headlights threw bright spears through the room. The Soldier twitched the final gap in the curtains shot and shut off the lights, throwing the room into darkness.

He could see well enough to approach the vacant bed next to Alice's, and resolved to only take off his boots to satisfy Alice's strange need to ensure his comfort. He laid back slowly, trying to ease into the squeaky support. It felt far too soft, which led him to wonder why she had described hers as uncomfortable.

She reached for him in the dark, unable to see him well. "I missed you." Her voice barely penetrated the darkness. "I'm so afraid I'm going to wake up and you'll be gone."

This woman was a stranger to him, but as familiar as the pistol that he gripped beneath the fluffy pillow. But he didn't know her. "I'm not him," he said brusquely.

"I know," she replied sadly. She let her hand drop into the empty space, the fingers loose. "But it's just you. And it's just me." She rolled onto her stomach, her chin digging into the cheap pillow. "What do you want me to call you? I'm not… I'm not really _her_, but I still like to go by her name."

"You choose."

"_No."_ The sharpness of her tone cut through the darkness. "This is you. You get to want things now."

"What's his name?" He remembered it, but he liked the way she said it.

"James. James Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes." The reverence in her tone hummed through the pillow under his head. "Bucky." He closed his eyes as she said it again. "_Bucky_."

It sounded like… _Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu_.

"Bucky," he repeated after her. He never wanted her to stop saying that name.

She let the word hang in the air, gentle as a butterfly and half as vivid. He could hear her take a breath as if to speak, and then release it as she decided otherwise. She rolled over to face the wall.

The high whine of the little mini-fridge beat against the clunking roll of the air conditioner, creating a patchy white noise that almost drowned out the heavy rustle of cotton as Alice moved in her sleep. Fighting his own extended sleep deprivation, the Soldier found himself fighting to keep his eyes open.

_No,_ he corrected internally. _Bucky_. The moment of weakness from the correction slipped loose the hold he barely grasped on the waking world.

* * *

_He was looking for something. _

_Walking down stairs carved deep into the side of a cliff, his left hand skimmed the wet stone. The old moss growing there tickled his palm, promising a lingering taste of salt. He descended, the air thickening and roaring growing louder until he could feel it rattling his chest. He reached the bottom step, but it hadn't taken him to the sea. The stairs cut off entirely with a final landing before dropping off into empty air._

_He leaned into the safety of the cliff wall as the wind rushed upwards, carrying the fine sea spray skyward. Beating waves chugged at an impossible task far below, carving out the stone beneath the earth one layer at a time; relentlessly, vengefully, spitefully._

_His head tipped up as a sea-bird cried, taking off towards the horizon; leaving safe harbor as it answered some ancient, primal call that he could not hope to hear but liked to think he could imagine._

_He let a foot hang out over the open air and let his body tip forward. His brief adjustment by gravity halted as a hand grabbed his jacket. Bucky turned his head, finding himself - younger, expression open and concerned - dressed in green wool._

"_Jamais," his double said. It sounded like a promise._

_Bucky tried to open his mouth, to ask what he meant by never, but the double let go. He fell through the open air as the rising sea mists stung like hornets at his skin._

_Gravity let go of his intestines as he fell and he thought for a moment he could hear… singing. The music faded as the roaring of a mighty sea rose to meet him. He plunged into a wave as it broke on the rocks, but below the surface he found another world waiting._

_A crimson field waved in the current of the crushing sea as grass might roll with the wind. Beat downwards by powerful currents, Bucky descended. _

_He squinted as his focus sharpened and found the field to be made of a thousand upon a thousand arms, all coated in blood and reaching; reaching for him._

'_Eleison', they begged, 'eleison', the mournful cry. He sank into a cacophonous misery while bloody arms pulled to and fro, singing 'eleison'._

_Hands touched his face and he gasped, lashing out with flailing arms. He could not strike enough arms to keep back the sensation of fingers running down his cheeks. He could not rid the smell of blood as it filled the seas. He gathered his strength and beat back, against a thousand upon a thousand arms in a tide of blood, singing 'eleison'._

* * *

The Soldier sat bolt upright, flinging his knife across the room towards the ghosts of his nightmares. Had he been better equipped, several more knives would have followed. Heavy rolls of sweat ran down his face and blurred his vision, making him wipe frantically at his face as he tried repeatedly to catch his breath.

He could still hear it. _Eleison_, whispering at his ear. His shoulders shook as he sucked in air as best he could, waiting for the voice, waiting for the measured comfort of its presence.

"Breathe," came the call from across the room, as reliable as he could want, but strangely outside his head. He complied, letting the air move through his chest as he gathered his senses and recognized his surroundings. The garish and outdated pattern on the beds crumpled and tore under his hands, but the scratchy fabric reminded him that he was awake so he did not let go.

"One more," came the steadying instructions. The final breath pulled him all the way back, though he could still hear the call of the ocean and the thousand upon a thousand arms, reaching and crying for mercy.

As final awareness returned, Bucky realized he could hear the _drip-drip_ of a thick liquid striking thin carpet. He lifted his head, once lowered to gather heaving breath, and found the calm face of Alice looking back. The woman sat in her bed, clutching her arm delicately. "Good morning," she greeted calmly, despite the knife embedded in her arm. "You mind?"

It took a beat for the image to process. Most normal people screamed when they had knives in their bodies. Most people cried, or floundered, or even wet themselves. Alice hadn't appeared to so much as lose color from her face.

Motion returned to his limbs in little spurts, making his legs shaky as he approached the calm little blonde. Bucky pulled the knife out in a swift motion, watching her face carefully. He could find no fear there, and barely more than a mild grimace of pain as Alice pressed the loose sheet to it to prevent the blood from dripping on the floor.

She tilted her head to meet his calculating eyes and considered it. "I'm not afraid of you," she said. "I'm not afraid of pain, and you can't kill me. I'm here, for as long as it takes." Her eyes flashed up to him, and in the morning light, they glittered with cinnamon amber. "I'm here."

She retreated to the bathroom as he stood at the foot of her bed. He could hear the sink running and Alice muttering to herself about getting bloodstains out of sheets.

Twice in twenty-four hours he'd done been the reason for damage to that woman's body, and twice in twenty-four hours she'd all but willed away the thought of it. She must not feel fear at all, he reasoned. It could be the only reasonable explanation. But he'd seen the fear in her eyes as he'd moved to strike at her in the museum.

Bucky cleaned the bloody knife, and wet down the spots on the carpet so they weren't immediately identifiable. Motels were more than accustomed to mystery stains, so the red smudge wouldn't cause much alarm. Bucky paused in his cleaning as Alice emerged from the bathroom, wiping water from her arm with a white towel.

He couldn't help but stare at the smooth, undamaged skin of her arm. She tossed the towel on her bed and held out her arm for him to examine. "Here," she said encouragingly, "look; no harm done."

He had questions, but mostly in the sense of a formless concern that followed Alice from room to room. Bucky reached out his hand to touch her arm with the lightest touch he could manage as if contact from his hand might reveal that wound to be hiding just under the surface. Her cool, soft skin under his coarse, calloused fingertips guaranteed his concerns to be lies.

"We should get going before housekeeping starts their rounds." Alice pulled down the sleeve on her shirt as she stepped away, throwing a few scattered items into her duffel and zipping it shut.

"Where are we going?" he dared to ask. The thrill of it nearly made up for the sick feeling produced by the lingering image of a knife in Alice's arm.

Alice stepped out of the door without bothering to check the peephole, an action that made Bucky nearly yank her backward into the room. Nothing terrible happened, no one's brains got blown out, so he clenched his hands at his sides instead as he followed Alice's swift climb into the truck.

"I'm calling in one last favor before I burn a bridge." She jangled the keys from side to side in her hand before turning the engine over; something that seemed more like a self-comforting gesture than one of habit.

"Do we need matches?" He didn't think he had matches with him, but they wouldn't be hard to procure if need be.

Alice laughed as she shifted into reverse; a bold sound that came out more like a bark than a light chime. "No, honey; it's a metaphor."

Alice seemed to have changed again in the night. The calm, surgically calculating looks had been left in the shadows of the night. This Alice fidgeted more and moved with an urgent impatience, but smiled wider and laughed. He decided he liked it when she laughed. He couldn't remember hearing someone laugh in a way that sounded like the first eager breath of morning.

The silence in the truck sat like a comforting blanket as the golden fingers of dawn spread across a slate blue sky. Less uneasy than before, this silence felt like the absence of confusion; a peace of an emptiness not made empty by anything lacking, but by burdens released.

That feeling, that glorious, precious, desperately rare feeling lasted until Alice pulled off the main roads once more. The further they drove from the heavily trafficked roads that made Bucky's spine crawl, the more he felt he could relax. Or would have, had Alice's tension not grown at an identical rate.

Her hands tightened on the wheel as she turned, clenching and unclenching. Her knuckles flared white with the strength of it as the truck bumped and bumbled down a gravel road, the suspension long overlooked for repairs.

She slowed the truck to a crawl as she approached an ornate wrought iron gate halting their progress. Alice took a steadying breath, running her thumbs over the leather of the steering wheel until it squeaked in protest.

Finally, an emotion he could recognize. "You're afraid," he realized out loud. Not of a gun to her face, but to sitting in this driveway and staring at the large stone building behind this gate.

"Yeah," she admitted openly, letting go of the wheel long enough to force the transmission into park. "This place scares the shit out of me." She flashed him a brilliant smile that failed to conceal her fear. "Let's go say hi."

* * *

A/N: It's funny how, with the massive amount I write from Alice's point of view, I forget that most people really want to read from Bucky's POV when they choose a Buck-centric story. He doesn't know what questions to ask yet, so much of what he does is respond to stimuli. Once he figures out what questions to ask, he'll do a little more talking.

Thank you so much for your patience - I hope it was worth it! This is, unfortunately, a 'how they got from here to there' kind of filler, but there's so, so much about Bucky's development that I want to explore that it kind of took over… all over.

Also- I know this is a little "Yeah, duh", but my goal is always to write a story you haven't seen before. Bucky stories tend to follow one of two paths: to run, or not to run, and I'm a little constrained by that.

Lastly! Thank you to everyone who reached out to make sure I was doing okay after I got glutened – it was so thoughtful.

I love my reviewers! SabakuNoGaara, ghostofthenight99, TrilbyBard, SunnySides, AquaBluey, nekokairi, sonnig, Momochan77, PistolHattersButtercup, TikiKiki, Sanguinary Tide, LadyGely92, MurphyPi, Guest, xRasberryx, AlexShah, MartinaBlack-Rose, Lucy Jacob, CarolainBlack, IvoryDarkWolf, and TimeLordsRule.

WE JUST PASSED 200 REVIEWS AND I JUST ASDKJSAFBLKAJDHFADJSLAJDNLKSAJD

10 Days to Endgame! You all ready to cry your eyes out in a room full of strangers? I'm hoping to get one more chapter posted before then.

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	14. Homecoming

Alice's blood rushed through her ears, nearly drowning out the panicked thoughts running alongside her pulse. She gripped the strap of her little duffel bag like a rope attached to a life preserver as the bag itself slapped against her thigh while she walked.

_This is insane._

_More than insane._

_Really insane._

Gravel kicked up behind long strides bounced along the driveway, mocking Alice's refusal to pull her truck onto the school's grounds. She didn't want to be sending any kind of message that she might _possibly _be staying, and though that seemed to be the best way to send the message it did make for an uncomfortable entrance.

_I have lost the last of my marbles._

_They have rolled away._

_I might have thrown them out a window._

"Alice," a coarse voice addressed her. Coarse from disuse, not anger. That voice could have been run through the shakiest phone line through ten connections and then played over a megaphone just a little too far away, and Alice would have still recognized it.

"It's a school, you know – big pretentious stone building like this and that yahoo made it a _school_; not exactly subtle, you know?" Alice laughed, pulling at the end of her braid.

"_Alice_,"he insisted, grabbing her arm to force her to stop the slow charge towards the castle. She could feel the movement of the plate steel in his fingers even through the thick sweater's sleeves. He dropped his voice to barely a whisper above silence. _"Eyes."_

"I know," Alice confirmed, "they're not exactly subtle." She put her hand on his metal one, squeezed the fingers gently, and he released her arm. Even stone-faced, his expression seemed apologetic; for grabbing at her? If a bruise might develop, it would be gone before she pushed up her sleeve to check.

"It's alright," she told Bucky. "They won't hurt you."

His brow furrowed. "And you?"

_He catches on quickly_, Alice thought. "If you can't break me, I doubt they'd do any better," Alice cast a broad arm at the school. "Come on; the chickens get nervous when the foxes linger outside." Not quite a confirmation, but not an outright lie; just the way Alice liked it.

Bucky walked a little closer behind her as they fell under the castle's shadow. Alice could hear the chime of children's laughter drifting from open windows, and the thunder of footsteps on stairs as classes let out for the hour and everyone ran to make it to the next class on time.

A fluff of blue hair poked out of a window and Alice saw Bucky's arm twitch violently to a concealed weapon. She grabbed it, wrapping her arm around his elbow like old lovers going for a stroll. She smiled broadly and waved, speaking softly to Bucky. "They're just children; curious about people walking towards the school. No need to shoot children." A few more curious faces popped out of windows before the adults herded them away.

There was no need to knock at the front door this time around as it was open and waiting for them as Alice and Bucky approached. Alice offered a warm smile to the old school-mates who waited for her, and received one wave and a pained grimace from Bobby and Piotr respectively.

Alice got straight down to business, releasing Bucky's arm as she approached the school's guard dogs. "I need to talk to Charles."

"He is busy," came Piotr's terse reply.

"I'll wait," Alice offered lightly as she passed him, entering the wide foyer. "Library okay?"

"_Nyet,_" Piotr commanded. "Visitors wait in lobby."

"Sorry, Al; you know how it is," Bobby apologized where Piotr had not, closing the heavy wood doors behind them.

Alice's face twitched. "Yeah, I know."

The hair on the back of her neck rose as the click of heels on marble echoed down the connecting hall. In a building full of gangly teens and children, only two people wore heels with any real grace. Ororo, and-

It shouldn't have shocked Alice that Jean Gray looked exactly the same as the day Alice had left. "Alice; so good to see you." She offered the perfect gracious smile, a hand extended just far enough to offer either a handshake, or to seem demure if rebuffed. "And who is this?" The woman held her tone just on the appropriate edge of a purr as she looked past Alice to Bucky.

"Nothing that concerns you," Alice bit back instantly.

Jean's face transitioned from warm to sour as Alice's abrasive tone dove past all social niceties, dropping the extended hand. It gave Alice a sick pleasure to ruin Jean's neat little script. "Everything that goes on in this building concerns me and every other X-Man."

Alice shrugged, trying to release the tension steadily building there. "Then we'll step outside."

Alice moved to turn her back on the redhead, but Bucky set his hand on Alice's shoulder to stop her. "We'll stay here." His thumb tapped the exposed skin of her collarbone. "Visitors wait in the lobby."

Bobby gulped nervously as Bucky's cold stare turned towards him. "I'll, uh, go see what's keeping Professor X." He turned and jogged down the hall.

The air inside the room grew thick with tension and try as she might, Alice felt her breathing quicken as adrenaline surged through her veins. Jean crossed her arms disapprovingly and shook her head. "It's so disappointing to see you like this, all…" she gestured to Alice's entire form, "disorderly."

Standing in the lobby in simple jeans and a black sweatshirt, Alice knew that Jean wasn't been referring to her outfit. A long time ago she would have lowered her gaze and apologized. A long time ago she didn't have Bucky at her back with his hand on her shoulder, a coarse thumb tapping at her collarbone. Now, standing in the lobby, Alice lifted her chin slightly and replied: "I rather like being disorderly. Chaotic, even," she added with a hesitant grin.

Jean made a disapproving noise. "Come on, Alice; we're both adults now."

Alice didn't try to keep the incredulity from dancing across her face. "And what's that supposed to mean, exactly?"

The whirring of a low electric motor cut through the tension in the foyer. "Alice," a calm, older voice addressed her. "It was my understanding you chose to leave us."

"Yeah," she shifted from one foot to another, slightly betraying her discomfort. "You're going to have Logan fly me and my friend to Iceland."

Xavier's attention drifted briefly to Jean as Alice was sure they shared a brief mental conversation. "And why would I do that?" he asked.

Alice's jaw flexed and she curled her lip into her mouth like she could contain the venom dripping from her eyes. "Because if you don't, I'll tell them everything. And they'll never look at her the same." Alice's eyes flashed to Jean only briefly. "You wouldn't want that, so…"Alice jerked her head to one side, gesturing down the hall. "Let's take a tour and chat, shall we?"

"No," Bucky challenged.

Thrown off her rhythm, Alice shifted in a way that forced Bucky to release her shoulder. She missed it immediately. "What? No – it's fine; you'll be fine, and I'll be right back and then we can-"

He crossed his arms over his chest. "_No._"

Alice threw up her hands. "I give up; I don't know what you're trying to say."

Alice felt a presence slither into her head and she froze. _**He knows that you're afraid, Alice. **_She felt that presence look around, examine the interior decorating, and take a too-comfortable seat. _**He wants to protect you. It's sweet.**_

Alice nearly threw up at the sound of Jean's voice in her head. She could have spat venom for the viciousness in her reply. "_Get out of my head!_" she screamed at Jean.

Signaled only by her distress, she was certain, Bucky drew the pistol Alice knew he had concealed and pointed it at the redhead. She didn't hear a safety click off, but Alice couldn't be certain he had ever switched it on in the first place.

He didn't shoot – thankfully – but he was waiting. For a reason? _For orders_, Alice realized with a sinking feeling in her stomach. "Don't," Alice whispered under her breath. Bucky did not lower the gun, but clicked the safety on.

The room hummed with power. Piotr had donned his steel form, and the temperature of the room had dropped by a significant degree. Alice could taste electricity in the air. Recognizing that she had lost complete control over her original plan, Alice turned her attention slowly, gathering her will and just doing her best not to throw up.

_**Hello again, Charles,**_ she thought. If Alice had to describe the feeling of thinking _at_ someone she would fail, throw up her hands in dismay, and go make some cocoa. But, after she'd lived with another voice in her head, cast from across the room or across the lawn, whispering and cooing and laughing, she knew what it sounded like. Using that knowledge, that history, she reached out from a place deep inside, and felt the feather-like intrusiveness similar to an oncoming sneeze that signaled Charles had accepted the 'handshake'.

_**You and I both know what happened. You let that woman hurt me, Charles. You knew that she hated me after she realized I didn't **__**want**__** her. You let her get inside my head and play around in there, **__**burning**__** me from the inside out; turning me into someone I couldn't recognize in the mirror no matter how long I looked. I knew something was wrong. You knew something was wrong.**_

Bucky seemed to sense, somehow, that there was a conversation happening without his knowledge. Some tension in her shoulders, perhaps, or the defiant lift of her chin. He stepped closer to Alice, still keeping the pistol trained on a barely-concerned Jean.

"Please," Alice said out loud, "put it down." Jean could stop the bullet if she focused hard enough. She could also boil Bucky's brain inside his skull if she wanted.

Bucky didn't look away from the perceived enemy. His arm brushed against her shoulder for a moment as he lowered the pistol, so close was his proximity; it gave her courage.

The first of the most immediate dangers removed, Alice returned to her thoughts. _**When I came to you and **__**begged **__**you to make it stop, you told me that 'young girls just get into it at times'. You told me that she didn't know what she was doing like that somehow made it okay to let it go on. You let it get so bad that when she finally broke me like a toy she didn't want any more, you had the **__**gall**__** to ask me to apologize.**_

_**She took things from me I'll never get back. **_Alice couldn't help but smile a little as Charles frowned, like he wanted to deny her claim but didn't have the footing to do so. She continued, _**you let her do these things not because you were afraid of her – like I had every right to be – but because you wanted her to be strong. And maybe you wanted me to be strong, too; but that was not the way.**_

Feeling the blood rise in her chest; the lingering wrath, the memory of pain and suffering and confusion, Alice had to take a breath. She wasn't really angry any more. She had set aside that anger and hatred and helpless frustration some time ago so that she could sleep at night. The new anger came from the new horrors Charles had laid upon her mind – traveling back in time with her a blindfold over her eyes.

But… she wasn't here for vengeance. She had come back to the school, to the halls that haunted her, to help Bucky.

His body nearly touched hers as he stood like a ready attack dog at her side, and with each breath that he or she took that distance nearly bridged. She could feel the concern that Jean had identified buzzing between them. Even if he didn't have the right words for it yet, Bucky was there for her. She had to be strong for him in return.

_**I want nothing to do with any of you – this building could burn to the ground and I'd be the first to dance in the ashes, but I'm willing to forgive you. I'm willing to **__**forget**__** everything that happened if you help me this one time. **_That lingering hate tried to seize her lungs through her chest as the shapes of words danced through her mind. _**You **__**never**__** helped me, not once…**_Alice cleared her throat, determined to make sure she could be heard. "I'm asking you to make it all right… by taking us to Iceland."

In a mostly symbolic gesture Alice set her hand on Bucky's arm. The tension in his arm hummed against her hand and she felt the urge to pat at him like a skittish horse. He shouldn't know the danger of the room in a genuine sense but could rely on the keen instincts of an experienced soldier. Were she a more confident liar, Alice would have told him not to worry.

From the outside, the last two minutes in that hollow lobby must have seemed quite strange. After yelling at Jean, Alice grew quiet and stared down the old professor in a wheelchair. At that moment, and many more to come, Alice wished she could read his mind.

* * *

_What._

_The._

_Fuck._

Men with steel skin.

Some kind of oddball ice-man.

The world's creepiest redhead; worse even than Russia's little Spiders.

An old man in a wheelchair with extremely expressive eyebrows.

Alice, a mouse in a room full of bobcats, begging to be heard.

Power.

_Power, _that hummed in the air.

Expressive Eyebrows, who Alice had repeatedly called _Charles_, tapped his hands against the arms of his wheelchair. "Your friend looks quite a lot like a wanted criminal from the news."

Alice had a response ready, her tongue as sharp as his knives. "Your students look the same with greater frequency, Charles." A warm glow thrummed in his chest. Not a furious heat, or a shameful burn, but more like… pride.

"Give us a moment." The old man rolled away, soon followed by all but the steel-skinned man who watched Alice like she might sprout horns and pull a pitchfork out of thin air. He didn't like the look of anger and thinly-veiled disgust he could read in the other man's face.

"I can kill her," Bucky commented, not bothering to lower his voice. "If you want. Might take a few tries." That got the steel man's attention – disgust morphed into surprise and back to anger, but now directed in a much more preferable direction.

Alice appraised his words with a smile. "That's sweet, but no." She snorted derisively. "That would just make her a martyr, and she'd love that."

"_Bozhe moy,_ Alice; have you no shame? We are family."

"_Ona ne tvoya, chtoby nazyvat' sem'yu,"_ Bucky spat. Nearly his mother tongue, the words came easily and dipped in venom. _She is not yours to call family._ If they had ever been Alice's family, it was clear to him that she feared this place now. A tremble in her lip when she hesitated between words and a thread pulse that fluttered along her neck like a caged bird spoke volumes.

The steel man addressed Alice directly, ignoring Bucky's rebuttal. "_Utka, _you were such sweet girl – always kind, always giving, always smile – what happened?"

That looked like it hurt. Alice's mouth opened like she wanted to reply, but then pressed her lips together tightly; silencing herself. Bucky's grip tightened on the pistol. He wasn't sure the lower-caliber rounds would penetrate the steel skin of Alice's enemy, but he was willing to give it a go.

"Hey," he barked, getting his opponent's attention. "_Yesli vy sobirayetes' dat' yey poshchechinu, imeyte poryadochnost', chtoby zaplatit' yey za yeye vremya."_ The steel man spluttered in disbelief at the offensive suggestion. _If you're going to slap her, have the decency to pay for her time. _"_Ili shlepni menya i posmotri, chto poluchitsya." _Bucky smirked, and flicked his fingers in a 'bring it' gesture. _Or slap me, and see what happens._

The steel man started a round of half-epithets and tensed his fists for a fight despite Alice's orders for both of them to knock it off. _That's right – look at me, not at her._

A chortle of coarse laughter broke through the tension. "Gettin' in trouble again, Rebound?" This other man looked closer to Bucky's level of 'scruffy' than anyone else who'd cruised by in Alice's rough welcome; overgrown mutton chops and a lazy flannel under an outdated denim jacket, with an entire ensemble held together by a very Texan-style belt buckle. He strode past the metal man without a second glance, appraising the exhausted Alice in one sweep. "You look like shit."

Alice sagged in relief, the iron leaving her spine in a rush as she smiled at the newcomer. "Hey, Logan." She placed a hand on Bucky's arm in an attempt to provide a calming presence. "This is Bucky." Her eyes smiled a little less than her mouth, but it remained an improvement from the earlier tension. "He's an old friend."

"I'm supposed to take you and your…" he looked the Soldier up and down. "… _friend_… to the old country."

"That's great to hear – when can we leave?" Alice was definitely leaning on Bucky's arm for support, relief robbing her of the adrenaline necessary to keep her standing.

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Warmin' up the engine now. In a rush?" he asked, taking a step back and allowing them to follow.

"You could say that." Alice left her hand on his arm as they walked. He could feel the pressure of it against the steel, even through both his shirt and jacket.

For as much activity as the school seemed to portray, the route they took through and eventuallydown through the large building seemed mostly abandoned. Dark oak walls yielded to sterile white modern ones as the elevator doors opened. Bucky took an abrupt step back, grabbing Alice's wrist to keep her from exiting.

"Bucky?" Alice asked, stepping close. "It's okay." It was not okay. Memories of a variety of sterile and not-so-sterile places with bright lighting and dim lighting, all that tasted like a rubber mouth guard and felt like electricity shooting through his brain, threatened to overwhelm his senses. The memories slammed into his gut with all the force of a thorough beating, and he suddenly found it hard to breathe. _Wipe him and start over._

Logan was asking Alice a question and Bucky couldn't hear it. He could see the frown on the gruff man's face, see the tension in his body he tried to hide by tucking his thumbs into his pockets. He could see the worry in Alice's eyes.

A thought flickered across her face, and she swung her bag around on her shoulder, digging around for a moment before pulling out a pack of gum. She pulled out two sticks, showing him they were from the same pack, and unwrapped them both with nimble fingers. She popped one into her mouth, and held the other out to him.

He accepted it suspiciously and chewed on just the corner. His mouth filled with the taste of processed mint so strong it made his teeth ache. The chilly sensation shot up through his nose like a bad frost and made his eyes water. He inhaled sharply, which didn't help at all, and blinked rapidly as he resisted the urge to sneeze.

"Yeah, it's terrible stuff, right?" He could hear Alice's voice again. "Good for purging the senses. You with me now?"

Determined not to let his senses overwhelm him again, Bucky shoved the rest of the gum in his mouth. He nodded as he chewed, and allowed Alice to lead the way out of the elevator. Logan wisely kept any additional comments to himself.

Bucky followed Alice, his eyes firmly fixed on the back of her head and did not let his attention stray. If he could memorize the haphazard way her hair tended to slip out of the little elastic holding it away from her face then perhaps he wouldn't notice the hum of the fluorescent lights, or hear the echo of footsteps bang against the walls. It looked like a maze he could happily lose; endlessly searching out new paths with his hands without ever really looking for a way out.

His torture was mercifully short-lived as the white halls opened into a modest hangar bay containing a single stealth-style jet. His attention wandered from Alice as he sought to categorize this new place, and she had to put a hand on his arm to remind him to keep walking.

True to his word, the engine hummed a warm tune of a well-kept engine as they boarded and Logan climbed into the pilot's seat, leaving the co-pilot's space empty. "Strap in, kids," he called as the ramp closed the belly of the jet and he flipped through a few pre-flight checks.

"I've got it," Alice protested as Bucky checked Alice's harness twice over.

"Just let me do this," he insisted, fastening the buckles. She grumbled, but no longer fought his hands as he gave the harness a decent shake to ensure she was tightly secured. As he clipped into his own chair to her right, Alice raised an eyebrow in skepticism as his harness received far fewer checks.

"Nonstop service to the North Pole, keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times," Logan announced, and the jet rose smoothly from the tarmac. Hydra would have bombed several countries for that jet's maneuvering ability, Bucky thought as it rose above the school's green lawns and took off into the sky.

Alice looked out the window to the rapidly shrinking building fading into the greenery of Westchester County. She put a hand on her chest lightly to touch at the bullet sitting under her sweater. She blinked misty eyes and lowered her head.

"You getting' sick back there already?" Logan called over his shoulder, interrupting whatever moment Alice had been having.

"Nah, just choking up at that _godawful_ cigar smell that follows you around just like I remember; have you done laundry at all since I left?"

Alice flashed Bucky a smile as she caught him watching. Her face spoke in a language he'd forgotten – or been made to forget – but he knew that he had once known what that look meant. He could tie it only to a taste – a memory of a taste – of fresh mint leaves.

Logan chuckled, producing a cigar from the pocket of his denim jacket. "That depends; what year is it again?"

"You're disgusting," Alice laughed as Logan also produced a lighter and got to work on the cigar.

"Marie likes it," Logan defended.

Alice shook her head. "Marie likes _you_; there's a difference."

"Oh, you want a barrel roll, Alice?"

"What? No!" Alice protested.

"_Two?_ You've gotten so brave – here she goes!"

Alice shrieked as Logan spun the jet in a tight corkscrew, and Bucky's left hand shot out to grab at the buckle of her harness as it rattled in place. The metal groaned under the pressure but he could not will himself to hold it with any less force.

"_You're such an asshole, Logan!" _Alice screamed, clutching with both hands at Bucky's arm for some sense of security.

Logan eased them out of the spin and into a level run again. "You sure about that?" he asked coolly.

Alice grumbled darkly but clearly wouldn't risk another series of barrel rolls to win an argument.

"Dum Dum," Bucky said suddenly as a sense of familiarity shuddered through him.

"What'd he call me?" Logan barked.

"Not you!" Alice yelled back. "What about Dum Dum?" she asked him.

"You used to bicker like that with Dum Dum." It felt unusual for a memory not to overtake his sense of time and place, and provide context to a situation rather than distract from it.

"Yeah," she confirmed, her voice tinged with sadness, "I did." Her gaze fell as a fond smile spread across her lips, only to be replaced by a look of embarrassed surprise as she found her hands still clenched tightly around Bucky's arm, his metal hand still locked over the harness buckle on her stomach.

They both stared at the entanglement together for a solid moment, and he let go of the steel just as Alice released his arm and Bucky turned his attention to the little window to his right and did his damndest to ignore the rush of heat that had filled his chest. The sensation, abrupt and intrusive, made focusing on anything else an impossible task. He closed his eyes and focused on it instead.

_One._

The petals of a yellow paper flower, spinning between her fingers and tucked into her hair.

_Two_.

Merry music, people laughing, _Bonne Anee, Alice._

_Three._

A fondness, a desire, and a denial.

"She out yet?" Logan's voice interrupted his focus.

Bucky opened his eyes, and found the window surprisingly dark. How long had he been focusing on that memory?

"Hey, is she asleep?" Logan repeated the question. Alice had indeed fallen asleep in the seat behind Logan, her head bobbing lightly with the motion of the jet.

"Yeah," Bucky confirmed.

Logan shook his head. "Same old Alice. Get up here, whatever your name was."

Bucky unclipped his seat's harness and dutifully climbed into the copilot's seat, narrowly avoiding kicking a control or two. Logan glanced his way to make sure everything was intact.

They sat in awkward silence for a minute or two, and Bucky was about to ask the other man what the hell he wanted when Logan finally spoke. "Don't let her come back to the school again."

"Why?" He had absolutely no intention of letting it happen anyway but was curious about Logan's reasoning.

He chewed angrily on the remnants of his cigar. "Somethin' there's not good for her. I never figured out, what, but…" a muscle tic in his jaw conveyed his frustration. "She always bounced back. And then one time she didn't. I thought being away might've changed things, but she had the same scent she always did." Logan flicked a switch on and then immediately off again; an unnecessary motion to discharge pent-up energy. "Fear. She's terrified of that place."

That much was obvious already. "Did she ever tell you why?"

A deep scowl settled into Logan face. "I'm not good with people. I took a lot of solo missions to get away, and had a lot of catching up to do whenever I got back, and Alice…" he punched another series of buttons vindictively. "I thought if she had a real problem she'd just _ask; _she asked about enough other shit."

"She never asked for help," Bucky said. It didn't need to be a question. She'd barely asked for help removing his knife from her arm.

Logan grunted a confirmation. "So you _do_ know Alice." The console of the jet beeped for attention and Logan punched a button to silence it. "Building full of people with super-powers and nobody thought to ask why she was so damn terrified. If they – if _we_ can't do that, she needs to stay away. If Chuck wants to send her away again for whatever fuckin' reason he's got, then someone's gotta make sure she's okay." Logan clenched his hands on the controls. "So don't fuck this up."

"I'll keep her safe," Bucky promised.

"You fuckin' better," Logan replied. He released the controls with one hand and clenched the fist tightly. Three long metal blades shot out from between his knuckles with a metal-on-metal _snikt_.

Bucky recoiled in shock but had nowhere to go.

"I'm holding you to that promise." Logan relaxed his fist slightly and the blades retracted. His knuckles healed over almost instantly as he returned his hand to the jet's controls. "Now go wake her up – we're landing soon."

Bucky climbed out of the seat and back into the passenger rows. He knelt in front of the sleeping Alice and put a hand on her knee. He meant to say 'Alice', as he had already on several occasions, but instead when it left his mouth it had turned into "Hey, Doll."

Alice moaned a protestation and blinked sleepily, rubbing at her face as she woke slowly. "Mmn… where are we?"

"Landing just outside of Akureyri," Logan called back.

"My _Amma_ was born in Akureyri," Alice said around a yawn.

Bucky checked her harness again before strapping himself in for the landing. Still seized in place, he'd likely have to break it for her to get out again after they landed.

Logan laughed at the lilting musicality of her sleepy voice. "Yeah, I remember."

"That's so nice of you," Alice sighed, clearly still not awake.

The jet landed with as much grace as it had executed upon takeoff; barely a jostle as it settled on the ground. Bucky was out of his seat a moment later and got to work peeling open the mangled steel of Alice's harness.

"Hey," she commented, more awake, "I don't remember it looking like that."

"Sorry," Bucky said, freeing her with a final yank.

"Don't be," Alice brushed a few metal shavings off of her sweater as she stood, "I'm not paying to replace it." She retrieved her duffel as Logan lowered the jet's ramp behind them and a swift, icy breeze rushed into the cabin.

Alice took a deep breath and smiled. "I missed that smell. Come on," she beckoned, starting down the ramp with Bucky close behind. "If I remember right, there's a decent-looking hotel that's basically a row of little cabins on the south end of town."

"Hey!" Logan called for Alice as she hit the bottom of the ramp and she turned. He tossed her a backpack but Bucky caught it mid-throw, intercepting it neatly. "There's money in there. Enough to get you goin'. Stay safe, Rebound. And you…" Logan pointed at him, his stature aggressive and his eyes blazing. The scruffy man didn't need to speak. Bucky understood.

"Wow, thanks _Dad_," Alice drawled. "You want me home before nine, too?"

Logan laughed, ascending back into the Jet. "Be seein' you, Alice."

She watched as the Jet raised and sealed off the belly of the cabin. She watched as the engines roared to life and it rose into the night, vanishing against the midnight sky. She blinked rapidly and cleared her throat as the last of the engines' call faded against the distant crashing of waves. "We should get going."

"I'm following you, Doll." There was that word again; it slipped out so easily after the first utterance it felt as natural as breathing. A grin twitched on the side of Alice's mouth in response, and Bucky decided he wouldn't fight whatever part of his memory had conjured the name.

* * *

**Additional translations:**

_Bozhe moy: _my goodness.

_Utka: _duck (like calling someone a duckling)

_Amma: _Icelandic for Grandma

* * *

A/N: this chapter is so sad to me. I thought a lot about how much I wanted to dive into Alice's backstory, specifically why she left Xavier's school. We've gotten snippets of it, but never really the whole picture. Alice did a pretty good job of just setting the experience aside, while still acknowledging that it hurt her. She's earned the right to be angry, and it took time to learn who she was enough to know that it was wrong. She's earned the hate that she feels, but was willing to let it go for Bucky's safety.

_Whatever it takes._

Now we also have a reason for Alice's trick about memories. She's not too super sure about some of her own, so she uses the five senses trick to see if some of the memories she has from her time under Jean's thumb really happened.

Alice also tends to make the same kinds of friends, no matter when/where she is.

I love my reviewers! Ghostofthenight99, Momochan77, TikiKiki, Sanguinary Tide, AquaBluey, SunnySides, tuckerjnp1, bananaraberrybat, Natsuko26, katwigg90, nekokairi, and Lemontea-addict!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	15. Selfish

Sam Wilson's gut just wouldn't leave him alone.

_Sam, it's me. No bullshit this time; call me back. It's important._

Alice's no-nonsense tone inspired him to give up, only briefly, on his spiteful silence. And then she hadn't answered when he called back. Didn't return his voicemails, or call back; not for days.

His gut wouldn't leave him alone.

It ached and grumbled until he asked Steve if they could fly back from Romania - just for a weekend - to check in with Alice. He played the voicemail for Steve, and then Steve's gut wouldn't leave him alone either.

Sam swung the car from one side of her long driveway to the other to avoid the various potholes. Dawn was only just starting to break over the hills, and it made spotting the holes difficult. He nearly missed one, and the oncoming headlights startled a horse lingering near the fencing.

It took off, nickering some insult, and Sam slowed to watch it join the herd, the car moving to a lumbering roll. He frowned as he looked over the fields. "The horses shouldn't be out so early."

His gut twisted uncomfortably.

The slamming of car doors echoed ominously as the reached the barn and stepped out of the car. He hadn't realized how much emptiness could fill the farm air without Alice around.

Steve seemed to feel it too, head rotating on a swivel. "I'm going to check the barn."

Sam checked the office below Alice's apartment, though with all the lights off he knew it to be empty. He walked around to the side of the building, increasing evidence pointing to a conclusion that made him distinctly uncomfortable.

Across the road, sitting on a crooked fence post and watching curiously, Alice's ginger tomcat flicked his tail in a mildly interested manner.

"You here, Al?" Sam called up the back stairs to her apartment. No answer. He dialed her phone and didn't hear a ring - but by now the battery was most certainly dead if she'd misplaced it for this long.

"She's not in the barn," Steve reported, coming around the corner to join Sam at the bottom of the stairs.

They ascended the stairs and dread filled Sam's chest with every step. He couldn't place the source of the dread outside of a general _wrong_-ness at the farm. There was supposed to be music. There was supposed to be laughter and wry faces and cooing voices speaking to horses. The dead air mocked him instead.

Sam shoved a hand into his pockets to retrieve the spare key Alice had given him years ago, but Steve beat him to it by simply turning the doorknob. _Not locked._

There wasn't time for the ominous feeling ringing in his ears and the dread in his gut to meet in the middle of his chest, as the door opened on exactly the scene he hadn't realized he was expecting to find.

A cold breeze billowing white curtains over a red floor.

Broken glass.

Blood.

A smell of death, of rotting human flesh, smacked against his senses.

Crossing through it, treading towards the bedroom, boot-prints stained the new wood floor, following a trail of blood drops.

"Oh, God," Steve said, breaking the silence.

"_Alice?!" _Sam yelled, bursting into action. Barely skirting the blood he ran into her bedroom, frantically searching for the little blonde. Terrifyingly, each new corner of her apartment remained empty. Mercifully, each new corner of her apartment remained empty.

Devastation opened a pit in his gut, draining away the dread and leaving a vast and strangely hot emptiness, as he returned to the main room to find Steve carefully examining the bloody boot-prints. "I'm… I'm sure this isn't what it looks like," he said, standing slowly.

For lack of time to properly process, Sam replied instantly and with a bitter rage in his voice. "What does it look like, huh? Does it look like a hundred-year-old assassin killed my friend?"

Steve held up a hand to try to placate Sam. "Slow down, we don't know it was him-"

Sam interrupted, "That sure as shit looks like the same boot-print that got stomped into my chest a few months ago!"

"Bucky wouldn't do that – not to Alice." Steve turned his attention back to the pool of blood, seeing something Sam clearly could not.

"_Are you sure?!_" Sam stopped just short of yelling.

Steve's face said he was sure, but he nodded as well. "I think he was here when whatever happened, happened; but it wasn't him."

Confusion washed over the anger in Sam's chest, leaving him reaching for some sense of clarity and reason. "Then why hide the body?" he asked.

"That's just it," Steve looked up, seemingly searching for something in the room. "I don't think she's dead. I think Bucky ran and took Alice with him for answers."

Rage. Blinding, unrelenting rage. Sam spoke carefully around those feelings. "I'm not an expert, but I'd say those are pieces of Alice's _brain_ over there. So - not dead?"

"Alice has a powered mutation: super-accelerated healing." Steve looked sheepish. "I'm sure she was going to tell you herself, Sam."

"Alice has a – back up." Sam made a little 't' with his hands.

Steve didn't go back to explain, but just surged forward; the momentum of his thought propelling the conversation. "He couldn't kill Alice if he tried, Sam. And besides that – if he wouldn't let me drown in the Potomac he sure as hell wouldn't shoot Alice." Steve shook his head, grinning. "No – he's gonna keep her safe. And we've got to do our best to help."

Sam squinted suspiciously. "And helping your friend abduct my friend looks like… what?"

Steve pulled his phone out of his pocket slowly, as a thought had just occurred to him. "We've got to keep this quiet."

"Just to be clear: _Captain America_ is suggesting that we hide evidence of attempted murder." Sam crossed his arms over his chest. "You wouldn't happen to know how to clean up massive set-in bloodstains, would you?"

Steve made an apologetic face. "No, but I know someone who probably does." He hit the icon for a listed favorite in his phone, and it rang only a few times before a rough, feminine voice answered.

"_Romanoff."_

* * *

**November 3, 2014**

**Three months in Akureyri, Iceland**

Bucky strode up the long gravel drive towards a little red cabin set far back from the rest. _Home._ The door opened with its customary creak that he refused to fix, and he did his best to shake off the snow from his boots.

"Hello?" He called into the cabin, unlacing the heavy boots. "You home, Doll?" No response. He'd beaten Alice back from work. They worked on opposite sides of the town's inlet- she at the greenhouses, him at the shipyard, but she usually beat him home.

He could almost say he liked Iceland, as much as one would like any country over another. Alice's choice to return to her roots there could be looked at as a preferable coincidence, but Bucky liked to think she'd chosen it just for him.

Most people tended to mind their own business but in a welcoming kind of way. They didn't mind that Alice paid all their bills in cash, and that they could only be paid for their daily labor in cash. The tourism industry for the whole country was on the rise and they needed all the bodies they could get.

A flash of motion down the lane caught his attention- a yellow coat silhouetted against the deep green of the hillside, taking steps to avoid the slippery icy spots. His chest warmed with satisfaction.

It made for a tempting idea to put his boots back on and meet her along the driveway. He could help her avoid those icy spots, having just maneuvered them himself. She'd beam up at him, her face barely visible between her thick scarf and hat, and ask why he didn't put water on for hot tea instead, even though her eyes would be thanking him for the company.

Instead, he watched her from the window and she nearly lost her balance as she spotted him and waved enthusiastically instead of watching her step. He pointed down at her feet. _Watch where you're going._ She stuck her tongue out in reply but watched her feet for the rest of her approach.

"I'm home!" Alice called as she opened the little cabin door, letting in a cold rush of winter air. "It's freezing outside! I thought the wind was going to blow me right over!" She stomped her feet on a mat just inside the door to kick off the slush that had collected on her boots.

"Welcome back," Bucky greeted, taking his hands out of his pockets.

"Hey you," Alice beamed. "How was work?" She kicked off her boots and left them where they fell on the floor instead of the special dry mat they'd bought for expressly that purpose.

He stopped her as she approached and turned her around by her shoulders, marching her back to the door to put her wet boots away properly. "Sea trout just closed for the year; for the next few days we scrub up and hang up until April."

Alice fixed her boots with no additional comment. "Well, I'm jazzed from standing under the day-lamps all day. You hungry?"

"Doll," he said gently, cringing as the scent of her 'office' started to invade the cabin, "could you clean up first?"

Alice plucked the front of her sweatshirt up to her nose. "Wow, yeah – pretty bad today." She pulled it up and over her head and held it in a wrapped-up ball in front of her as she made a beeline for the cabin's one bedroom. "It's nice the greenhouses over the thermal vents are warm, but the sulfur smell really does get into everything."

Lazily hung with only half of the real intent, Alice's jacket fell from the hook by the door into a wet lump on the floor. Bucky picked it up and smoothed out the crumpled sleeve, hanging it properly on the hook.

"Did you bring home anything from work?" she yelled through the slightly open bedroom door. He caught a flash of jeans being thrown across the room, and a _whulmph_ as they missed her hamper and smacked against the wall instead.

Bucky opened the fridge to retrieve the trout he'd taken from the "too small to sell" castaways from the ship and laid it out on the counter to de-scale. "What do you think?"

"You're so good to me." The water turning on in the bathroom drowned out Alice's next words.

Bucky wished he could agree. The spin of the knife in his hand reminded him of times he'd used it for far less homely reasons. He lost his grip on time for a moment, holding that knife. He could hear a scream - high, keening, terrified.

"I love fresh trout," a voice suddenly chimed on his right. His hand tightened around the handle of the knife. _Do not stab Alice. She does not appreciate being stabbed._

Her hand appeared in his vision and plucked the fish's discarded tail from the cutting board, tossing it into the bin for him. She smelled faintly of the orange pumice soap that was required to truly get the sulfur smell out of her skin, which briefly threw him for a loop. Bucky was used to her smelling like clover. The disconnect, however, was enough to ground him again. He wondered absently how much time he'd lost in the flashback if she was already out of the shower.

He set the knife down, hand trembling slightly from the effect of the flashback. "Last of the year, so enjoy it while you can."

"Oh, don't worry, I intend to." She waggled her eyebrows at him as she set a big pan on the stove and plopped a generous slab of butter in the middle.

Bucky moved around the kitchen to the other side of the large island to give Alice enough space to cook. She cooked running only on instinct; adding spices as she opened the jars and took a brief sniff. She never measured, tastes with great frequency, and had yet to replicate any meal they'd greatly enjoyed. She'd leave jars and canisters in various places in the little kitchen, but especially on the oversized island that doubled as their dining table.

"We're already prepping for the spring," Alice sighed as she spooned honey into a dish to start a glaze. "Knutur wants to try for bananas, so I've got to figure out how to keep them happy. Do we have room in our dome for a pup or two?"

Bucky had assembled a little greenhouse against the leeward side of the cabin for Alice's favorite herbs and spices, and more often than not she had a work project or two tucked away for special care. "I can move some things around."

"So," Alice asked, prying open a cap with her teeth to finish seasoning the glaze, "what'cha got for me?"

Their nightly ritual, as it could only be described, was best performed while Alice cooked. She couldn't stare too intently, and she honestly seemed more focused when half-focused on a second task. Alice poured the glaze into the pan and added the fish, leaning back as the high heat spat a little butter up at her.

Bucky picked up his notebook from the far end of the counter and thumbed through the pages before reaching his most recent entry. "Just the same as yesterday. One of the fellas had a tin of linden berries with his lunch and I nearly knocked them out of his hand."

Alice frowned and chewed on the side of her lip. She poked the fish around until the determined it ready to flip, then chewed the other side of her mouth as she cooked the other side of the fish. Bucky waited for her to finish processing her thoughts like he imagined she might wander through a library; pulling down books idly and thumbing through their contents.

Alice hummed, letting the fish slip from the skillet onto a large plate for serving. "Sorry, Buck; I've still got no idea."

"Makes two of us," he agreed, pulling the serving plate close and cleaving off a large portion. The haunting memory's significance escaped them both any time it reappeared, each time as distressing as the last. He couldn't stand the sound by then for even just the visceral response it inspired, let alone whatever lingering memory was attached to it.

Alice ate directly from the serving plate, digging her fork into the flesh. She wiggled a little in place at the flavor - something she called her 'happy food dance' any time Bucky commented. Before he could comment, though, she checked the clock on the wall and did a double-take.

"Shoot!" she cried, leaping out of her chair. "I'm going to be late! Why didn't you tell me it was so late?!" She swatted at his leg as she ran for the bedroom to change.

_Because I hoped you would forget what day it is._ Bucky hated the first and third Friday of the month. Hated them far more than one should hate a date on a calendar. On the first and third Friday of the month - every month - Alice disappeared for a few hours. She dressed nice, wore heels, and came back late and a little disheveled.

He remembered that Alice used to be an active and social person in the time before Hydra. Here, in Iceland, her world seemed mostly limited to her greenhouse job, the tiny red cabin, and wherever it was she went at night twice a month. He wanted to ask, but it felt like it would be a further imposition on an already limited life she'd chosen without hesitation.

But his curiosity burned like ice in his chest. Curiosity and fear as well; that maybe she didn't need him as he needed her. He shoved more of the fresh-cooked fish in his mouth to try and push out the bitter taste of jealousy.

Alice's heeled boots clicked along the hardwood floor and she paused briefly at the sofa to adjust the zipper digging into her right heel. "You sure you're going to be okay?" she asked, as though it might stop her if he said no.

He never said no. Bucky picked up his notebook and flipped through, trying to find his place. "Is there a reason you ask that every time you go out?"

She rolled her eyes. "Because you make that face time I go out."

"I'm not making a face," he defended without knowing what face he was making.

Alice pointed. "It's a face like I just told you 'no dessert after dinner' or something."

Bucky flipped through his book still and tried to look like he didn't care. "You're gone for hours, you wouldn't know if I did."

She sighed loudly. "If you want to know where I'm going, just ask."

He shrugged. "It's none of my business."

Alice paused at the door, scarf draped loosely around her neck. She watched him quietly as though she had a perfect rebuttal but was deciding whether or not she wanted to use it. She seemed to decide against it and grabbed her coat from the hook. "Okay then - do I need to bring my keys or will you be up?"

_Keys make excellent improvised weapons in a pinch. _"Bring your keys, just in case."

She grabbed her keys from the bowl next to the door. "Alright, well, the usual rules apply; don't burn the house down, keep out of my chocolate, and I've got my burner if there's an emergency." She flashed the cheap little phone in his direction before tucking it into the back pocket of her jeans.

With a swift open and shut of the door, and the blast of cold that followed, she was gone. Alice didn't linger, didn't pry, and didn't hesitate. She made decisions and stuck to them. Bucky wondered sometimes what decisions she'd made about him.

He tried not to think about it. With all the time he had, two Fridays a month, he appreciated the time she gave him to think. _What the fuck am I doing here_ usually crossed through his head a few times. _She'd be so much better off if I weren't here_ was also a common theme.

But Bucky was also selfish. Alice could wake him from his nightmares, brighten a room with her smile, and her open emotions inspired him to tease and banter whenever an opportunity arose. She could be petty and bitter, a little spiteful, and absolutely matched him for secrecy, but he didn't consider any of that to be a detractor.

He remembered that he'd loved her. It had come back quickly after they moved to the little red cabin, and the realization had hit him over a meal. Alice had made something with baked apples – of which she was terribly proud – and the weak evening light had caught the cinnamon in her dark eyes. He had tasted the apple before it touched his lips and felt the cold bite of winter even though the cabin was closed up tight against the roaring Icelandic winds.

Selfishly, he could not leave her. Also selfishly, he could not allow himself to love her again. He wanted her to stay exactly as he knew her now; a beacon in the maelstrom, leading him to shore. Lying came more naturally than the charm he remembered, and he found it easier than it should have been to keep Alice at a careful distance. She'd worked herself as far through his cold walls but had met that impasse.

Selfishly, in the third and final form, he could not push her out from that burrowed place so close to his heart. She lived in a tight orbit around him within a comfortable arm's reach that allowed for slightly more than familiar touches. It seemed as though she was waiting for something; a tiny seed buried deep in the soil just waiting for the first rains of spring.

Bucky stretched briefly as he stood, popping a spot in his back that had been bothering him all day. The _crack_ echoed sharply in the lonely cabin, missing Alice's usual reply of '_bless you'_ that never made any damn sense.

The cabin sang that lonely song as he cleaned up from dinner and put away the dishes. The floors sighed under his feet as he stopped briefly in Alice's bedroom to retrieve a new set of clothes from the cabin's single closet. The curtains rattled angrily as he closed out the night and turned off lights, and shuffled to the sofa to sleep.

Even his breathing could not fill the hollow places in the cabin as he tried to relax enough to sleep. He couldn't, not there alone anyway, and it left him drifting in the liminal space between rest and stress. In that place, he could hear the soft clicks and whirrs of the electronics in his arm any time he shifted. In that place, any sigh of the wind against the cabin was an enemy on the verge of a breach. In that space, an hour was a minute was a day.

He heard a key inserted in the front door and his grip tightened around the hilt of the knife under his pillow. The door opened and closed with a delicate creak, and Alice's heeled boots clicked across the hardwood before she yanked down the zippers and kicked them off. Her keys clattered as they hit the countertop loudly and Alice swore under her breath.

Bucky's grip slackened on the knife and he continued to feign sleep. He felt movement in the heavy blanket draped across his lap as Alice pulled it higher and tucked it gently around his shoulders. Cool hands brushed against his face and her lips pressed quickly against his forehead. "Sweet dreams, Dodo."

Her bedroom door stayed open, though a long creak signaled she'd left it open only a crack. Alice claimed she couldn't stand sleeping with the door closed when they'd first moved in and he'd insisted she take the only bedroom. He'd slept on little better than a metal slab for seventy years; the long sofa would be more than soft enough for him.

The sounds of Alice, the soundtrack of home, cut away at the sharp edges of his anxiety. The obsessions he'd begun to build in his mind, rebuilt time and time again when she stepped out the front door without him, started to crumble block by block into the waves of sound that drifted from Alice's open door.

The sounds of the cabin - of _home_ \- let Bucky sleep and really relax. Alice rolling in bed, the wind rushing over the low roof, the occasional rumble of sheep's hooves running along the low hills; all the sounds combined to make the oddest and most familiar of lullabies.

But not every night stayed peaceful.

Bucky woke in the very early hours of dawn when light only barely begins to dilute the darkness. Morning came late in Iceland's early winter and never stuck around for long. Soon, there would be no dawn at all.

It wasn't the light that woke him, Bucky realized, but dissonance in the music of his home. A distressed whine and frantic thrashing slipped through Alice's open door. Bucky pulled the knife from under his pillow and swiftly entered the little bedroom.

_No intruders_, he quickly assessed.

Moaning in distress, Alice rolled in her bed, restricted and restrained by the sheets twisted around her torso and legs. She cried out sharply as Bucky approached the bed but left the knife on her dresser, making the decision to wake her that much easier.

"Doll," Bucky said gently, leaning over and shaking her shoulder to wake her from the nightmare. It didn't seem to help at all and she flailed, striking him on the face smartly.

_Enough of that_, he thought. He let her rake at his shirt with her fingernails a moment longer before he struck like lightning. He grabbed her wrists and used them to lift and twist her in a single swift motion, pulling her back against his chest and pinning her arms to her stomach. She gasped for air, struggling against his hold.

"You're okay," he whispered, rocking her gently. "I'm here. We're in Akureyri, in the little red cabin with heat that doesn't work all the time."

Her gasping turned to a weak pleading. "I'm sorry." Her voice trembled and she slowly stopped fighting against him. "I'm sorry."

"Breathe, Alice," he insisted. "It's okay – you're okay." The room stank of sweat and while Bucky radiated heat, Alice's cold, clammy skin made him shiver slightly.

He let go of her arms as her breathing steadied and she rubbed at her face. Neither of them liked to dwell on nightmares. Neither of them really liked to talk about it afterward. The continuing struggle to achieve normalcy left one always reaching for the other if they had somehow managed to surge ahead on the path.

Alice slumped forward out of his hold to rub at her face with her hands. Her skin twisted under the motion, leaving angry red marks to flare and die against the light color as the minor irritation barely presented through her mutation. "Sorry I woke you," she mumbled around her hands.

Not for the first time, Bucky felt the urge to run his hand along her back to soothe her trembling frame. Not for the first time, Bucky left his hands on his knees, fingers twitching slightly as he let the urge die unfulfilled. "I'm going to make coffee, you want some?"

Alice pushed back sweaty hair from her face, though still heavy with sweat it started to stick up in odd directions. "Yeah. I'll be out in a minute."

She didn't like it when he pried. To be fair, he didn't like it when she pried either. He left well enough alone, satisfied for the moment that she was no longer wrapped up in her nightmare, and retreated to the cabin's main living area as she moved towards the bathroom to rinse off.

He retrieved Alice's keys from the kitchen counter and set them in the bowl by the door. He moved her scarf from the bunched-up location under her coat to hang on a hook by itself to dry. He found Alice's boots in their scattered locations and set them on the mat by the door.

_Coffee, I think_, Bucky decided, pulling the jar of grounds out of the pantry.

The shower kicked off, rattling the pipes in the usual way, and Alice emerged a few minutes later with her hair still wrapped up in a towel. She padded across the floor on tip-toes; the oversized sleep pants would trip her up if she walked normally.

She grabbed a slab of bacon and a handful of eggs from the bowl in the fridge and closed the door with her hip. "You want some?" she asked. Her toes curled up away from the cold floor and she shifted from foot to foot in front of the stove.

"You shouldn't walk around barefoot; it's not good for you," he chided as an answer.

She shrugged. "If I put socks on I might slip."

"Don't you have slippers?" He could probably see them on her bedroom floor if he leaned over and looked hard enough.

"The sheepskin feels funny between my toes." Alice made a wry face.

An odd reason to let her feet freeze on the floor. "So wear socks?"

She looked horrified. "With slippers? You monster; I bet you'd wear socks with Crocs."

Resolute that Alice could clearly not be trusted with her own safety, he gently took the skillet out of her hand and set it on the stove. "What-" Alice started to ask, but Bucky set both hands at the narrow point of her waist and lifted her bodily to have her sit on the counter with a little squeak of surprise.

His hands lingered at her waist, savoring the way he could feel the quickening of her breaths as her chest expanded. "You gotta take better care of yourself, Doll," he reminded her, releasing her waist to tap her nose with his left index finger.

She flushed pink and scowled, but also didn't jump down from the countertop. "Don't burn my bacon. It was expensive."

He knew exactly what his little touches did to her. Easy to fluster, simpler still to confuse, Alice could be distracted away from her original train of thought whenever Bucky deemed it necessary. Or, as was becoming more common, simply whenever he wanted to touch her.

He looked incessantly and intently for signs she didn't want his touch – recoil from the cold steel or a reluctance – and through every test and venture, she welcomed his little expressions of affection. Angry, spiteful, vindictive Alice threw open the windows of her heart for him, no matter the chilly winds that rushed in as well.

He smirked and flipped the bacon before it burned. "I do what I want."

Alice swung her bare feet in the air. "You're a terrible roommate."

_Just a selfish one_, he thought. Bucky tilted the pan over a plate and scooped out Alice's bacon. "Would a terrible roommate cook perfect bacon?"

He expected to endure a long, cold, Icelandic Winter as the sun abandoned the Northern island.

"Gimme," she ordered, holding out both hands for the plate.

He expected they would both find their demons waiting in that dark, in the time of a winter's night without end.

"Don't hurt yourself," he chuckled, handing over her prize. She plucked the pieces up with her fingers, not bothering to use a fork.

"I'm invulnerable to grease burns," she boasted immediately after dropping one still-steaming strip of bacon.

He expected to see the sun rise again in Spring; blazing orange and beautiful.

He wondered if Alice would applaud its return, though he knew as soon as the thought occurred to him that _of course_ she would. She would laugh and applaud, her voice lingering somewhere between a chime and a bark as it did any time she watched the sunset through the cabin's kitchen window.

_One._

She might even reach out and grab his arm, always squeezing it so gently though she couldn't really hurt him, as the bright spray of color painted the clouds in deep bloody hues.

_Two._

And, as many times before when the emotion of the moment overtook her bodily control, he would see the mist in her eyes collect and rain gently down her cheeks; Iceland's smallest waterfall.

_Three._

Spring would come again.

* * *

A/N: Hoooooo man the poetry of this got away from me. It came on a night when I DID NOT want to do any writing. I forced myself to sit down and write for 30 minutes, and that last good chunk came out of it.

Also - originally I wasn't going to show the bit where Sam and Steve find Alice's 'remains', but it was heavily requested and I figured it couldn't hurt. It was going to be mentioned in Act 3 but not in-depth. Hope you like the change in direction! This makes for yet another reason to leave a review: sometimes you get the content you're really hoping for!

Are you super-not-okay after Endgame? Because I AM NOT OKAY. I hope this helped you to be okay.

I love my reviewers! TrilbyBard, Momochan77, ghostofthenight99, AquaBluey, Sanguinary Tide, MartinaBlack_Rose, Lucy Jacob, Lemontea-addict, TimeLordsRule, SomebodyWhoCares, TikiKiki, SabakuNoGaara426, nameword, Idontknoworcareanymore, xRaspberryx, stars that listen, SunnySides, bananaraberrybat, katwigg90, Nyx-Arae, SilverShadowWolf46, Paula sullivan, Nekokairi, and amrawo!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	16. Tortured Measures

**March 15, 2015  
Seven months in Akureyri, Iceland**

"_Can you tell me how you feel, Sergeant Barnes?" The curious tone implied something far less sinister than the pain that wracked his body. "If you could only cooperate a little, I would be happy to provide something to ease your discomfort."_

_Bucky could barely breathe. Every breath felt like sucking in a cloud of acrid smoke, and as much as he fought against the slithering snakes that bound him to the table, he could not break free. They ran over his skin in clenching, grasping waves, biting at his arms and gut as they moved past in an almost lazy fashion as though the act and effort of torturing him had become uninteresting. _

"_Find the nurse," the snakes hissed darkly, "Shoot her."_

_Now, with the rage and the fire and the fear, he could break free. Now, with an anguished cry known to all suffering men, he ripped the snakes from his arms and tore them asunder. Now, with blood on his hands, he advanced on his torturer with murder on his mind._

* * *

The sound of running water was what woke him.

Bucky sat up slowly, scratching at the scruff along his jaw. He flexed his fingers, finding a tightness there that usually accompanied a rough nightmare. Not terribly unusual, just unpleasant. He stood and folded his blanket, draping it along the back of the sofa for the day.

He moved to the large window in the living room to open the curtains and let in the weak morning light. He squinted as light filled the room and averted his gaze to let his eyes adjust. "Doll-?" he began to ask, wondering for a moment why she wasn't already making herself breakfast or coffee to get ready for the day; even though the fishery hadn't opened yet for the season, Alice still had work in the greenhouses.

His question died a swift death as his lowered gaze saw something that derailed that train of thought.

Blood.

Little drops of blood on the floor.

Little drops of blood on the floor leading to Alice's closed bedroom door.

"Alice?" he called, distress creeping into his tone. The drops of blood on the floor were hardly enough to indicate she was in any real danger, but to him, they represented violence that time couldn't seem to erase.

"Just a minute!" her muffled voice answered.

_Not good_, he thought. On top of every other signal that something bad had happened while he slept, Alice never closed her door. In any other household, it would be weak evidence at best, but in all the ways Alice could be consistently inconsistent keeping that door open could be utterly depended upon.

She hadn't locked it, thankfully, as Bucky would simply have ripped the damn doorknob off instead of being able to open it with near-perfect silence to find Alice hunched over the attached bathroom's sink in her work jeans and a tank top, massaging soap into a bloodstain on a flannel shirt.

Alice scrubbed lightly at the top with her fingers, working soap into the stain. She glanced up as the floor creaked under his boots and plunged the shirt under the pink-stained water. "Hey, Buck," she said too casually. "What's up?"

He moved to her side and reached a hand into the blood-tinged water, pulling her shirt up. The blood stain spread from the collar down one side of the split front. "Did I hurt you?"

Alice took the wet shirt out of his hands and dunked it under the water again. "Maybe I walked into a wall or something; you never know."

Bucky ground his teeth together in frustration. He had been picking up on Alice's method of vaguely not answering questions by insinuating without confirmation. "Answer the question."

"No," she challenged, which only confirmed that he _had_ hurt her. A sharp intake of breath and a murmured curse said she recognized her mistake instantly. "Hey," she soothed, letting go of the shirt and drying her hands on a towel, "you're doing so much better, and all girls know how to get blood stains out of clothes."

She reached for his arm but he stepped back out of her reach. "I could have killed you - I've killed people without hesitation, Alice." She didn't seem to understand the danger he posed - sure her mutation had saved her once or twice before, but he couldn't count on it working every time; it would be just his kind of misfortune to have her die by his hands and really stay that way.

Alice didn't let his rebuff bother her and shoved her hands in her pockets. "You killed people in 1944, too," she threw out.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Bucky snapped.

"It's supposed to open your fucking eyes," Alice snapped back. "You think if I electrocute a cat every time it meows it'll stop meowing? It's just training. Some carefully calculated combination of physical exhaustion and operant conditioning is how you make a soldier; there are hundreds of thousands of them. Hydra just pointed you and your rifle in a different direction."

How could she even compare the two? "It's different, that was different; but you can't understand, Alice." Unable to escape the conversation in a normal manner, Bucky turned and left her there with the bloody evidence of his violence. He intended to work out his frustrations on some firewood, perhaps, but he never made it all the way across the cabin.

Alice's voice, dropped to a softer register, stopped him in his tracks. "I've killed people, too," she admitted.

Bucky stopped dead and his head snapped around in surprise. "No you haven't," he shot back. He vaguely recalled a decision among the Howling Commandos intended to prevent that exact situation.

"Yes." Alice's solemn expression attested to her honesty. "I have." She looked so lonely, standing in the bedroom door with her hands wrapped around her middle. He recognized the hollow defeat in her eyes and the twitch of her fingers.

A resounding knock on the front door startled them so badly Alice yelped in surprise.

She steadied herself on the doorframe while Bucky vaulted easily over the sofa to retrieve the hidden pistol from under the coffee table, click off the safety, and point it at the door.

"Anya?" a muffled voice called. "Are you home? You forgot your wallet last week!"

"Coming!" she yelled loudly across the cabin, grabbing a random sweater to throw over her tank top.

"Who is that?" Bucky asked, barely lowering the pistol to stare at her incredulously.

"A friend - don't shoot him, please," she hissed as she quick-stepped past him, pulling her hair from underneath the freshly-donned sweater. She stared at him meaningfully as she reached the door, hand hovering over the lock.

"What?" he asked sharply.

"Your arm!" she waved her left one in the air, wiggling the fingers.

_Shit_.

He tucked the pistol into his jeans and retreated to the bedroom in search of a sweater to cover the glittering steel that made for a dead giveaway that he did not belong. With the door safely half-closed, he could hear Alice open the front door and cheerfully greet the visitor.

"Hey, Viktor – thanks so much." Her voice bubbled in the way that said she was smiling in an endearing way.

Bucky yanked on a long-sleeve shirt and grabbed his gloves from their home on the dresser. Steel barely covered, he tugged the shirt over the pistol's grip and returned to the cabin's main space.

A tall, gangly, dark-haired man stood just outside the door, and Alice had very subtly blocked him from actually entering the cabin by leaning in the open doorway. Her hands flopped her wallet back and forth as if testing its weight or juggling a single object. The dark haired man, she'd called him _Viktor_, smiled down at the much smaller Alice as though she were entertaining.

"No problem, I thought you'd come by to get it, but – oh! I didn't know you lived with someone." Bucky could almost be certain that it was the intensity of his focus that got the other man's attention.

Alice glanced over her shoulder and glared at Bucky, before flashing Viktor a nearly apologetic grin. "Er, yeah; that's… Jakop." Alice stumbled over Bucky's Icelandic alias.

Viktor's mouth opened in a little 'o' of mild surprise. "Oh, _Fyrirgefið mér, vinur minn, þér lítur ekki út eins og þú ert frá Íslandi_."

"His dad's Irish," Alice provided swiftly, starting to close the door. "Thanks for bringing my wallet!"

"See you soon?" Viktor asked, craning his head to follow the rapidly closing gap.

"You bet!" Alice replied. She closed the door entirely and bolted the lock. She stood at the door, hand on the bolt until the sounds of crunching gravel signaled Viktor's departure. She took a deep breath, almost a sigh, and let go of the bolt. "Whoo, that was interesting."

"Who was that?"

"Viktor Thorsson, if you intend to run a background check."

"Why does a stranger know where you live?"

"He's not a stranger – I see him twice a month. Don't any of your friends or co-workers know where you live."

"_No they do not - _this isn't some fun vacation, Alice, and if you're not more careful you're going to get another bullet to the head!"

"If I'm not careful - if I'm not-" Alice snarled. "What exactly is it that you think I do all day, run around town throwing confetti with my name and address on it?"

"I don't know, Alice, you don't tell me what you do some days."

"Why don't you just ask where I go twice a month. Go on – _ask me!_"

He couldn't stomach it. If he had waited too long, taken too much, or broken her too often, he couldn't hear it.

"Alice," he pleaded.

"_Gods above_! Don't you _care_ about anything?"

"What about you? _What the hell are you doing here?_"

"I want to help you!"

"Help me do what? If I killed you every night would you just smile and pretend it didn't happen? What if I started picking off the villagers; is that okay too? What would it take for you to finally realize _I'm not going to be what you want?_" His fears burst out before he could try to control them, to edit for a better meaning, instead coming out raw and painful.

It came out with seven months of uncertainty and nightmares, seven months of waking up and wondering for a frightening moment if maybe it had all been a frozen fantasy, seven months of feeling unsure if he could reach out and still find her waiting there to take his hand.

He could see the damage on her face. The hurt, disappointment, and downright fury that morphed into being in her dark eyes. He would never see the evidence of her nightmares written in her skin, he knew; she healed much too quickly for that. But he should have known, better than anyone else, that the real damage is always internal. "Doll-"

"No! _NO!_ You don't get to call me that after-" she blinked, stopping mid-sentence. Then she laughed hollowly. "We've been here before. You remember how it ends?"

He did.

_I thought you were dead._

Then, as now, he'd tried to convey meaning without knowing how to express it. Then, as now, she searched his face to give him the time to collect his thoughts, though nothing useful poured from his mouth.

Alice dropped her attention to the floor. "I just… I'm going to work."

"Are you coming back?"

"Of course I am." She smiled wryly. "I'll be back late. Take some time to think, Buck."

Alice donned her coat and wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck to ward off the early morning chill. In a series of careful, measured movements she took her keys and left him alone in the cabin.

She did not look back.

The rage in his gut whispered evil thoughts, feeding itself and growing as it rose into his chest. The rage told him to destroy the cabin, to break the windows and burn it to the ground. His empty sorrow and unspoken words told him to destroy himself instead.

Stuck between two options, with a long list of methods running familiar paths through his mind, Bucky stood in the middle of the floor and did nothing at all.

He couldn't destroy the home that Alice had made for him.

He couldn't destroy himself, the man that Alice had made him.

He could see the touch of her influence swirling around his orbit like some distant moon just out of reach.

He moved to the sofa, sat down, and put his head in his hands. He sat there as a memory of his more violent nature tried to convince him that the answers to his problems could be found in a box of ammunition, however he saw fit to use it. On his other shoulder, an ancient man whistled a forgotten tune he'd last heard on a piano and reminded him that he'd been in this moment before.

_I let her walk away from me before._ This much he remembered. He stood, noting that the day's light had faded while he'd wallowed in his indecision, and grabbed his coat from the hook by the door an burst out into the late afternoon's weather.

"_We've been here before_," she'd reminded him. _"You remember how it ends?"_

_Maybe,_ he thought_, she wasn't talking about what happened. _His pulse raced. _Maybe, _he thought_, she was talking about what happened after. _He'd tried to forget her. He'd tried to pretend that she didn't matter, that he didn't need her face in his orbit to breathe. Of course, it hadn't worked out for him and he'd nearly lost her to a bullet. He'd nearly lost her to a drowned ship. He'd nearly lost her to time.

The old man on his shoulder smirked invisibly, stood, and snapped his newspaper shut. _Jamais_.

Bucky tore through the streets of their town at a pounding run, trying to reach the greenhouses up on the hill where Alice worked before she disappeared into the crowd departing at the end of the day.

To his relief, he caught sight of her at a distance as she waved goodbye to her coworkers. Her bright yellow coat made her easy to spot among the more common black and navy coats of the group. Most people came down the East side of the hill, headed towards residential areas, while Alice and two or three others took the North side down, headed into town.

Alice could not have been easier to follow down the back streets of Akureyri. She had never been good at stealthy movements, and the chiming bark of her laughter rang through the afternoon crowd like a beacon calling his name.

Alice lost most of her group as she moved deeper into town, and as she waved to her last friend as he turned left and she turned right, Bucky let a little more distance grow between them as Alice's guard would go up now that she was alone.

He stood at the corner and watched her cross the street at a light trot, waving thankfully at the car that let her cross. She shared a brief word with a burly man outside a two-story building and he waved her inside.

Bucky tucked his hands deeper into his pockets and followed her across the street. The doorman crossed his arms as he approached, surely a little suspicious at the unfamiliar face.

"Evening," the doorman greeted. "You here for the weekly?"

"The weekly?" Bucky parroted, confused. Was some code word required to enter the building? Would the police be called if he got it wrong?

The doorman raised an eyebrow and pointed to his left, to the large poster that blocked one of the two entry doors.

"Uh," he stumbled. "No." So, nothing quite so sinister as he'd feared. Not even close.

The doorman nodded as he saw the understanding on Bucky's face. "Well, we're closed otherwise. Try back tomorrow."

Bucky nodded but didn't respond, turning away from the doorman. His adrenaline level fell, and a mild buzzing echoed through his head. A sense of shame soon followed. What had he been expecting? A woman who had done nothing but shelter and support him to be doing what; going to a police station and reporting on his activities? Secreting away to some stranger's home to whisper sweet nothings in the dark?

He could have predicted the sun's golden appearance over the ocean on the first morning of the Icelandic Spring.

He could have predicted that he would strain the limits of Alice's kindness and patience to a far-flung breaking point.

He could not have predicted that, beyond her breaking point, she would have found a new ledge to stand on as she waited for him to join her in the sun.

_She's been waiting for me_, he realized. _She's been waiting the whole time._

It was a long, thoughtful walk home.

* * *

A/N: Oof. emotion! Very whump-y chapter, here. So… Bucky has figured out where Alice goes on Fridays, but what does it mean? And, let's not forget, Alice has straight up murdered people to protect her boys. She stabbed a soldier about to shoot Dum Dum, and she killed via poison/sepsis the Azzano overseer that tried to kill Bucky.

Alice and Bucky are definitely fighting more - which can totally be healthy! They're not doing it in the best manner exactly, but they're finally getting down to the base of Bucky's fear. He worries that he won't ever be healed enough to call himself 'okay' again.

Expect some Grade A Fluff in the next two chapters, dear readers: (17) **Tongue Tied** and (18) **The Future. **You will forgive me for many things I've done to my characters after these two come out.

Question: Would you prefer to read 17+18 as I finish them (so 2-3 weeks between the two chapters), or wait a month and get both dropped at the same time? I know I've dropped some content in chunks before, especially when there's content I think needs to be read back-to-back. There's nothing that says Tongue Tied and The Future _should_ or _need_ to be read together, I just think it would make for a slightly better and more satisfying read. Let me know your thoughts!

**Answers to some Questions:**

**Will there be Endgame Spoilers?**

Only in the very, very last chapter. My current outline is 34 chapters for RITD, but could easily expand to 36, so you're safe for now.

**Was that a C. /Aslan/Narnia Reference to Spring?**

While I'm incredibly flattered that someone thought I was making a C.S. Lewis reference, it was accidental. It was also a callback to WIAS: Persephone of Spring, and a time when they were happy together without a lot of the other complications. Kind of a sad moment before they descend into Winter together, but very poignant.

**Why Iceland?**

It's Alice's ancestral home, and people mind their own damn business there. It's nice. I've also never ever ever (ever) seen it referenced in a Fanfiction. Also, Iceland is gorgeous and everyone should go there.

**Why didn't Logan recognize Bucky?**

I go with the less-popular canon that Logan was in the Pacific for WW2.

**In your universe, did Natasha and Bucky have a relationship?**

I honestly haven't decided, but if they did it won't be an issue.

**Will we get to see Alice's POV for all of this?**

Yes! (sort of) I've got some content planned for the end of Act 2 that'll go over most of this in little bits and pieces. I don't like going over identical content from multiple POVs if I can help it, so it'll just touch on a few significant moments. (・・；) spoiler alert?

* * *

I'm trying not to think about a series of escalating medical problems as I write. My bloodwork came back positive for Celiac Disease markers and now I get to have an endoscopic biopsy. Yay me! (´；д；`) this is fine.

I love my reviewers! Momochan77, TimeLordsRule, TrilbyBard, bananaraberrybat, rosafern, SomebodyWhoCares, xRaspberryx, SunnySides, AquaBluey, nekokairi, tuckerjnp1, sonnig, Xtremesparkles, and amrawo!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	17. Tongue Tied

**August 2, 2015  
One year in Akureyri, Iceland**

A ceaseless sun hovered over the little red cabin on the quiet Sunday in the season without night. The day promised to be warm and humid, and Alice had flung the windows wide to let in the fresh air regardless of the uncomfortable warmth before heading to her greenhouse to care for the banana tree pups.

The sounds of her activity tapped through the adjoining wall as Bucky enjoyed the cross-breeze in the living room, carefully retrieving his notebook to go over his plan for the hundredth time. Bucky flipped through it, past pages of memories of snow and campfires, past bullets and bombs and ice. He thumbed the last two pages where he'd laid out his rough plan for the next Friday. Wanting to make up for his distrust of Alice and the infliction of the anger that came from his fears, he'd taken his time to make sure all of the details were just right.

Alice swore loudly outside - loud enough to be heard through the exterior wall shared with the greenhouse - and Bucky heard the distinct sound of something being thrown against the side of the house. He sat up a little straighter in his chair but didn't put his book down.

_stomp stomp stomP stoMP stOMP STOMP STOMP _Alice wrenched the front door open, and Bucky could have laughed at the look of undiluted fury on her face.

"_I hate bananas!_" Alice declared as she slammed the front door shut behind her.

"Is that so?" Bucky asked, doing his best to hide his grin. The tension that had been developing in his shoulders relaxed and he leaned back again into the sofa.

Alice paced in the open floor, gesticulating wildly. "I make it more humid, the pups wilt. I make it less humid, the pups wilt. I give them more acidic soil, the pups wilt, and you know what happens when I give them more alkaline soil?"

"The pups wilt?" he ventured amusedly as Alice stormed over to the kitchen.

"_Yes!_" Alice wrenched the door open on the refrigerator and started pulling out ingredients. "I'm making ice cream!" she barked irritably. "What flavors do you like?"

Bucky could remember vaguely having had ice cream at some point, and though the sensation tickled at his tongue the flavor escaped him. "Not sure," he tried to say nonchalantly, opening his notebook again.

The sounds of activity in the kitchen stilled. He could almost hear Alice weighing the words. "Well," she thought out loud, "you like strawberries so what about strawberry ice cream?"

"Sounds great, doll."

With that little permission, Hurricane Alice took over the kitchen, using twice as many dishes and half as much time as generally necessary to cook anything. She hummed while she worked, swaying slightly from foot to foot like a memory of dancing.

Easily occupied there for hours, the kitchen likely took up more of Alice's time in the cottage than sleeping should. Constantly losing things, constantly experimenting, it was fortunate that more often than not she produced food more flavorful and textured than Army rations or Russian slop had ever been.

He glanced at her as the afternoon drifted along and she set the creamy mixture in the fridge to cool while she cleaned up her horrific mess in the kitchen. Alice made things, and unmade things, with an ebb and a flow like the tides. Destroyer and creator. Sunrise, sunset. _Alice_.

They'd never talked about their argument during the long winter, mostly because neither of them ever brought it up again. Alice had returned never knowing he'd followed her. The next morning she carried on as if it had never happened at all.

She filled their largest bowl with ice and rocked a glass bowl down into the crumbly cubes, letting it chill. Metal jingled as she rummaged through their cutlery and kitchen tools. "Where's the whisk?" she asked, her voice muffled as she shoved her head into a cabinet.

"Drying rack," Bucky replied without looking.

"Found it!" she declared, waving the whisk. "It was in the drying rack."

"Who could've guessed," he mumbled.

"Loud noise," she warned, tapping the whisk on the side of the glass bowl resting in ice.

"Consider me warned," he replied, writing the last reminder in his notebook. The jangling of metal on glass filled the peaceable silence with an alarming screech of materials and, even with the warning, the noise set his nerves on edge. He closed the book and tucked it into his back pocket as he stood up, asking "Not to question your authority in the kitchen, ma'am; but that is some god-awful noise."

"I know," she made an apologetic face, "But the no-churn stuff just isn't right, and we can't afford a machine. I'll be done in a couple of minutes and we'll basically have soft-serve." Diligently whisking the pink mixture that gradually seemed to thicken, a twitch of her eye told him that the noise bothered her as well.

A glitter of gold and copper caught his attention as her vigorous whisking shook free her pendant from its concealed home under her loose shirt. He watched the bullet swing freely in the air, momentarily distracted, and almost missed Alice's question.

"Got anything new for me?" she asked.

"What?" his brain struggled to focus.

"Your notebook," she jerked her head towards the sofa where he'd been working, "You were so focused."

"Oh, just some scattered thoughts. Nothing concrete. But," he broached, trying to give her something to distract from frying to deep, "Tell me about our French lessons."

Alice flushed a deep pink instantly and Bucky could not have been happier. "Well," her voice trembled with embarrassment, "I didn't like that you and Jones and Dernier could have all these secret conversations, and since Dernier is the worst teacher ever you offered to teach me."

He crossed his arms as he leaned a little over the island, raising an eyebrow. "And how much of it do you remember?"

"I remember all of it," she admitted. "_C'etait l'un de mes cadeaux preferes de votre part." _She coughed to clear her throat of some deep emotion. "But anyway - ice cream's done!"

Alice used the whisk to clumsily portion the bowl's contents into two smaller bowls and stuck a spoon in each. She grinned as she handed him his.

"Are you planning on staring at me as I eat it?" Bucky asked, tentatively filling the spoon with the mostly-frozen custard.

"Just the first bite." He could see the joy in her face - unabashed; she wore her feelings on her skin without complexities or pride. _It was one of my favorite gifts from you._ Did she understand everything she'd given him?

He shoved the hefty spoonful in his mouth and closed his eyes to enjoy the rich, fruity flavors that burst on his tongue. It didn't need to be a memory for him to want to savor it.

"That good, eh?"

He took a slightly more modest second spoonful. "Doll, you know I don't give compliments when you ask for them."

"You're no fun at all." Alice mock-scowled.

_Alice, do you know?_ Bucky thought as she shot him a wicked grin over the lip of her spoon heaped high with strawberry ice cream. "I aim to disappoint."

She snorted indelicately. "In spades, it seems."

_Alice, of the sunrise._

Bucky shifted a bit on his seat. "I don't know if that was supposed to hurt my feelings or just bruise them a little."

Alice tossed her head to get a strand of hair out of her face. "Oh, I aim to massacre them entirely at some point - just you wait."

_Alice, of the sunset._

"In that case, I'll just have to retaliate as appropriate." Bucky raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean as approp - _Bucky, NO!"_ Alice screamed as Bucky seized her bowl of ice cream and dashed across the cabin, rapidly scarfing ice cream as fast as he could. _"You monster!" _she bellowed as she pursued as best she could, but Bucky could easily vault over the sofa and without batting an eye.

_Alice, maker of men._

He ran out the front door, still without shoes, just as he reached the bottom of Alice's bowl and stacked his on top, pushing through the stabbing ice-cream headache that was trying to take out the lower half of his brain.

The temperate afternoon made for perfect ice-cream weather, though a little difficult to enjoy with Alice hollering threats as she chased him down the road. "Bucky!" she cried, "You better- ow! - you better watch your - _ow!_ \- I know where you sleep!" Her threats seemed harmless when interrupted by squeaks of pain as her tender feet disagreed with running on gravel.

Bucky stopped running as he scraped the bottom of the second bowl. He hadn't been able to taste about the last third through the chilly condition of his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He let Alice catch up, all pink-cheeked anger and flyaway hair, tiny fists balled up like she might hit him. "That was so mean!" she declared.

He shrugged nonchalantly. "What can I say - I like your cooking."

Alice wrinkled her nose. "That was for us to _share_, Dodo!"

"_Je n'aime pas partager," _Bucky smirked.

She opened her mouth to reply but paused, brow furrowing in confusion. "Did you-?" she paused, seemingly unsure.

"What?" he asked, hoping that she remembered, and hoping she didn't.

She quirked her mouth to one side, conflicted. "Nothing, I guess. We should get back inside before the neighbors see you." She lifted her left hand and wiggled her fingers. "You ran out all shiny."

Shit, he had. "You gonna pummel me if I do?" he asked, already working his way back up the long lane.

"Nah," Alice replied, following. "I'll just smother you in your sleep sometime soon."

_Alice, _he wanted to say, _do you know? Do you know you are what makes this place my home?_

Instead, he let the joke carry along with a laugh. "I'll put it on the calendar. How about next Friday night?"

She tapped her finger on her chin thoughtfully. "I've got my thing that night, but I can do it right after I get home?"

"It's a date."

She took the bowls out of his hands so he could hide his metal hand in his pocket, which made it difficult for her to hide the blush that lingered on her cheeks. "Dodo," she grumbled.

* * *

**Friday  
****August 7, 2015**

Bucky alternated between shoving his hands in his pockets and plucking at the gloves on his hands as he stood on the curb. _You can do this_, he tried to psych himself up. It wasn't working.

_Rakarastofa Akureyrar_, the store's sign declared. He'd bolted home after getting off the ship, scrubbed stray scales and the fishy smell from his skin, dressed in the new clothes he'd hidden from Alice, and then jogged across town all to get there in time.

"Hey; you Jakop?" a voice called from the open door. "Come in – it's roasting out here." The beckoning spurred him into motion, stepping into the cooler air and allowing the glass door to swing shut behind him. It had been an age - more than an age, truthfully - since Bucky had been in a barbershop but he was satisfied to see that they hadn't changed much in seventy years.

"Thanks for staying open," he said softly as they retreated into the air-conditioned shop.

"No problem; we've all had one of those moments where we forget to clean up before a party. There's a hook there for your jacket. What were you thinking?" The mild Icelandic accent made the barber sound very curious as his voice picked up at the end of every sentence.

"A bigger change, I think. Something like that?" He pointed to one of the many style sheets on the wall.

"Oh – classic; that'll look pretty good on you. Alright; let me just get a drape and we'll jump right in."

Bucky remembered someone occasionally cutting his hair with scissors when he'd been with Hydra. They did a terrible and sloppy job, mostly concerned with keeping it short enough to be free of the mechanics of his weapons and not get caught in the plates of his arm.

When he heard the buzz of the clippers it no longer sounded like a drill pressed against his arm, but instead, it sounded like the time Alice plugged in the handheld mixer and it was already set to 'on'; blades whirring angrily as she shrieked profanities.

When he felt the outside of scissors skim along his scalp, it didn't feel like ice creeping in on his senses, but instead, it felt like Alice's cool hands brushing hair out of his face when she thought he was sleeping.

Something once so associated with servitude and suffering had, though her hands and her voice alone, become a peaceful and relaxing experience once more. He could enjoy the light music and mild chatter and embrace the transformative experience of a haircut.

A brief brush along the nape of his neck to get rid of any lingering hairs and the barber declared him "fit for any party on the island!", spinning him to get a good look in the mirror. "Short sides, medium up top; probably get a trim every 3-4 weeks to keep from growing out too badly. Look good to you?"

Bucky had to tilt his head to make sure that was actually his reflection looking back. Not quite the Soldier. Not quite Sergeant Barnes. Somewhere… in-between. Himself.

Running on the emboldened high of a good haircut, Bucky would have forgotten his new suit jacket if the barber hadn't caught him at the door with a laugh.

_One more stop._

It didn't get dark in Iceland in the summer, but Bucky could feel the anxiety building in his chest as the evening drew long and his plan started to fall into place. A warm breeze ruffled along the back of his newly exposed neck as he turned down a side street, making his skin tingle.

"Jakop! Looking sharp!" the florist waggled a finger as he pushed the door open. "You have such strange taste, but I have to admit these flowers are quite beautiful if not quite a lot of trouble to grow."

"So I've heard," he agreed as his eyes scanned the displays, searching for the right color. He spotted it instantly as he could almost hear his own voice, less seventy years of suffering, asking the question: _Is this the color of a California Sunset?_

The florist plucked the largest blossom from the display, trimming off the base and tucking it gently into a little pocket vial to keep the flower perky. "Would you believe I already have four more requests for these? Well - One California Poppy, ready to dazzle."

Seeing it in person, he could believe that there existed no other color quite like it on Earth, except perhaps viewed from the ocean's shore on the California coast. He tucked the vial and neck of the blossom into his breast pocket, and the bright orange almost glowed against the black suit jacket.

He could almost hear his pulse in his brain as he left the florist. He'd sort of removed the option to chicken out once he'd cut his hair as there was absolutely no way to hide that change. Alice would notice it and probably demand to know _all about it immediately_ if he just walked away from his plan right now.

"You here for the weekly?"

"Sure are." Bucky resisted the urge to shove his hands in his jeans pockets.

The doorman nodded, crossing his arms. "Head on in, then."

Bucky grabbed the handle not obscured by the hanging poster reading _Weekly Electric Swing Dancing_

Too many heads of blonde hair spun in a semi-coordinated mass of bodies on the dance floor.

A smaller woman broke off from the group and stepped towards the bar, holding up two fingers to the bartender.

Bucky easily wove through the crowd.

"I've got the lady's drinks," he signaled to Viktor, who took a moment to recognize him.

Alice sighed deeply in annoyance. "Listen, pal, I – oh!" she squeaked in surprise as she turned, clearly ready to chew someone out and instead saw him.

"Evening, doll. I'd like to buy your drinks if it's not too much trouble; maybe introduce myself."

Alice raised an eyebrow. "And if it is too much trouble? You don't know – I might have a fella waiting."

"I'll take that risk." Bucky grabbed the two beers as they slid toward him. "I'm James."

"_James_," she tested the name.

"Do I get your name, doll?" he asked, holding out an arm for her to take at the elbow.

She smiled slyly. "Hrafnhildur," she replied, setting her hand on his arm.

"Right – Hildy it is," She barked a laugh, giving him courage. She followed him to a high-top. "So, Hildy, you from around here?"

"I live on the East side."

"Kinda lonely out there."

"I get by."

Viktor hand-delivered their drinks with a smile, twisting the caps off the ciders with a clean cloth. He gave Bucky a suggestive wink.

He leaned a little closer to Alice, tapping his bottle to hers in cheers. "You keepin' a Victory Garden all by your lonesome?"

Alice took a long draw of the heady cider and batted long eyelashes in a move all too familiar. "Well, Uncle Sam says it's good to grow vitamins by my kitchen door, and he hasn't done me wrong yet."

The music changed – from a bass-heavy tune to something far, far more familiar with newer elements that still matched. The saxophone and trumpets rang out in a thrilling lilt that reminded him of familiar swing tunes.

Bucky set his cider down and offered Alice his hand. "I believe Uncle Sam also instructs fine young ladies such as yourself to keep our soldiers smiling - how about a dance?"

His heart skipped a beat as her hand slowly slid into his and a smile grew on her lips. "I think I'd like that, James."

"You think you can keep up, Hildy?" he asked as they approached the frenetic throng of dancers trying to adapt to the snappy swing moves that ran through his veins. Clear of the last table, he pulled Alice toward him before twisting her arm to guide her into a spin. With that, at least, if she stumbled he would easily be able to catch her.

He led her for just a few steps before he realized that she did not need his guidance at all; her tiny feet moved as rapidly as his, and her chin never dipped to check her footing. She could execute that footwork like she'd been born in it, like she'd lived his life alongside him the whole time and grown up playing stickball in the same streets and sat in the same pews on Sundays thinking she'd rather be anywhere else.

She smirked, holding herself close to whisper in his ear, "I had a fella who used to like to dance, so I taught myself to cut a rug in case he ever wanted to dance again." She let go of his hand to tap along with the ladies' part of that dance.

This was Alice of the golden sunset; of passion and hard work and endurance. She'd come here faithfully twice every month and learned to dance - the way _he _danced - and waited for him to join her in the light.

_Here I am_, he thought as she held took his hand tightly again though they had drawn far apart and he could see the joy in her eyes and he knew. He knew that she knew he'd come to join her in the sun.

Bucky spun her smoothly and her heels barely grazed the floor with the most familiar _click-click-click_ before he drew her close for a slide. "Lucky fella."

"I agree," she replied, "I'm quite the find. I used to be a nurse, you know?"

"What might an upstanding gentleman need to do for a one-on-one checkup?"

"He'd have to be quite the humdinger for me to hang up my cap like that, James."

"Oh Hildy," he crooned, drawing her close enough to feel the hitch of her chest as she took a sharp breath, "You've no idea how well I can knock this out."

Just like loading a rifle, his hands remembered.

Just like a stealthy pursuit, his feet remembered.

The delight in Alice's eyes, he would never forget. The wide open surprise. The sparkle of laughter. A languid, flirting bat of long eyelashes.

_One._

The music beat at a frenetic rate, matching the beat of his heart. The sound of memory and that moment in the here and now, matching together to pull the memories and feelings and joviality of the person he used to be into the person he was becoming.

_Two_.

The feel of Alice's hands in his, the little touches at her waist and back as he pulled her close or caught her in a spin, and feeling the power radiating between them as they focused completely on keeping time with the song, almost distracted him more times than he could count.

_Three._

Her hand pressed against his chest as she wobbled briefly, and her fingers grazed the flower tucked into his breast pocket. She seemed to notice it then, as she hadn't before. "Is that…?" she asked, her voice so soft he could barely hear it over the loud music.

He pulled it from his pocket, the stem pulling free from the little plastic vial of water and dripping a little on his jacket but he hardly noticed. He was focused instead on Alice's face as he tucked her hair behind her ear and slipped the California Poppy just above her ear. "I found the color of a California Sunset."

It suited her, in a way a glowing orange should not. It brought out the warmth in her hair and her skin, and made her dark eyes a haven against the light. Her hand settled at the height of her neck, though she looked like she badly wanted to touch the flower to ensure it was real.

"We should leave soon," she whispered, though her eyes said something very different, "It'll get crowded now that the music's slower."

He glanced around, surprised to find that he hadn't noticed the room getting far more crowded as they'd enjoyed the upbeat music. "You're right," he agreed, "after you."

Alice wove easily through the crowd, barely beating him to the bar to close out their tab for the night and grabbing her jacket from their table. The air outside was noticeably cooler than the dance floor, and several decibels quieter.

"Whoo, that's much better," Alice sighed as she slipped on her jacket. "Even with the midnight sun it's _still_ cooler out here than in there."

"So," Bucky started, but Alice grabbed his arm.

"Hang on, I gotta get these off or I'm gonna stab someone." She used his arm for balance as she tugged off her heeled boots one by one, leaving her standing on the sidewalk in just her socks. She flexed her feet, moaning in relief. "_So much better. _I should've known not to wear new shoes, but I didn't." She grinned at him, seemingly unaware of how strange she looked. "Okay - I'm good to go; what did you want to say?"

She walked a half-step ahead of his, as was their custom. She'd tried to get him to walk next to her on their few journeys into town but he couldn't stand it. He couldn't see her very well when she walked exactly next to him, and that made it difficult to identify threats against her and ensure her safety. SO he walked a half-step behind and Alice never commented. Tonight, however, still feeling emboldened by their dancing he walked beside her with his hands tucked serenely away.

"So this is where you've been coming all these nights," he said.

"Mhm," she said. She nudged him to make a right turn to head up the hill towards their part of town.

"It's nice," he added, suddenly at a loss for words.

"I really like it." Alice swung her shoes in one hand, walking on her toes to keep as much of her socked feet off the cold sidewalk as possible.

"You're gonna lose a toe," Bucky chastised.

"No, I won't."

Bucky still didn't like it. "C'mon; I'll carry you."

Alice waved him off. "Oh, that's not-"

"Doll," he interrupted, stopping in the sidewalk. "We can do this one of two ways. One of which you didn't much like the last time."

Alice cocked her head to one side as she thought back. "Are you referring to the time you carried me like a sack of potatoes?"

"Possibly." He turned his back to her, taking a knee. "Or you could be a little more involved in the decision this time."

Alice's small hands rested on his shoulders. "Don't you dare drop me."

"_Jamais,_" he vowed

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and he leaned forward, standing as she hopped slightly into a piggy-back carry. He hooked his arms around the backs of her knees and she rested her chin on his shoulder. The clover-smell of the hair wash she made by hand enveloped his senses.

_One._

"I'm not too heavy?" she asked from her position in the piggy-back position.

"Nah." He'd carried guns that weighed more than her.

_Two._

"Did you have fun?" she whispered near his ear, the warmth of her voice sending a shiver down his spine.

_Three._

"It was swell," he said.

She hummed and he could feel it through his thin shirt and jacket. "I'm really happy you followed me here, but don't think I didn't notice the pistol under your jacket."

"Just being careful, doll." He'd forgotten about the pistol. He'd lost himself in flirting with a pretty dame and trying to win her affections and keep her attention, setting aside his worries and closing off the outer reaches of his senses until he could utterly focus on the wicked smile in front of him.

He'd felt like a man again.

"Besides," he cleared his throat a little, "This pistol's new. I got it for you to keep with you; just in case."

"That's sweet," Alice hummed. "You gonna teach me to shoot, too?"

"Doll, we both know that you know how to shoot."

"So you remember that too, eh?"

"You charging down a hill on a warhorse and going into a dangerous building? Seems hard to forget."

"Let's talk about your haircut instead," Alice declared. One hand ran through the short hairs on the back of his head, making his scalp tingle in a pleasurably distracting way.

"It was time for a change." He'd keep it that way forever if she kept that up.

"Yeah?"

He hesitated before asking "do you like it?"

She gave it a moment of thought before deciding. "It's very you."

He slowed his pace as they reached their long lane, ensuring that the switch from the paved road to gravel didn't make him lose his footing and accidentally drop his girl. "I hope that's a good thing, Doll."

"Oh, it is," she reassured. "Refined, but still very rustic. It makes you look mysterious without being too serious or like you obsess too much about how you look."

"I think you might think too much about appearances, Al."

"Maybe I just know what I like," she countered, and it sent a spike of heat through his stomach.

He had to set it aside to focus on getting into the cabin. Retrieving his keys and turning a little sideways to unlock the door around Alice's legs. She waved them unhelpfully in and out of the way, laughing wickedly. "You could just put me down," she offered.

"There's gravel; you'll hurt your feet," he countered, finally getting the door open.

"Well now we're inside, you can put me down now," she said.

Bucky kept his grip on her legs as she tried to wiggle free. "Oh, I offer door-to-door service, ma'am."

"Then onward, steed!" she ordered, pointing to the bedroom.

Bucky complied dutifully, ducking forward slightly so she didn't clip her head on the lower door frame. His brain threw out a wicked thought and he turned completely around, stepping backwards until the backs of his knees hit her bed.

"Bucky?" she asked curiously. He leaned back, Alice squealing and squirming in his grip. "_Don't you dare!" _Alice shrieked like a child going over a rollercoaster as he flopped backwards onto the bed, squishing Alice between him and her mattress.

"Wow," he commented, "your mattress is really lumpy. How do you sleep here?"

Alice writhed like a trapped alligator underneath him, smacking his shoulders with her tiny fists. "_Get off me!_" she demanded. _"I can't breathe you great galoot!"_

He rolled to one side but found himself in a new position with Alice caged between his elbows. She licked her lips, looking up at him. Her eyes shone with the joy usually reserved for sunsets and ice cream, and the deep dark pitch of her eyes could not conceal her blown-wide pupils.

_Four._

Bucky didn't dare breathe.

Did he imagine the desire in her eyes, or was it just a reflection of his own? Could she taste it in the air, as he could? Did she worry incessantly, as he did, about the consequences of attachment but finding no release mechanism available to break free?

"Night, doll," he whispered lowly.

Her breath caught briefly in her throat and her eyes searched his face. "... night, Buck."

He tilted sideways to sort of roll off her bed and easily moving to stand.

"Thank you for… for everything," he said, hoping that she could see in his face that he truly meant it.

"Any time," she said, still trying to catch her breath.

He left her there, not daring to look back. He hadn't meant to be so close to her face so that he could count her eyelashes if he had wanted to. He'd wanted to show Alice that he trusted her; that he appreciated everything she'd sacrificed and compromised to let him be whole again. He hadn't meant to lose himself in his memories of love.

The realization hit him as he passed the threshold of the bedroom and he could no longer hear Alice's uneven breaths pulling at his senses and it left him strangely cold inside.

_I'm not so sure it's just a memory._

* * *

A/N: And, with no small amount of courage and determination, Bucky is made a man again. Not less than before, not more than the Soldier, but also not the same. He is himself, having grown from his experiences and stepping into the sun in his own right. Alice may have been there to help, but it was Bucky that did the work.

This is probably the fluffiest fluffy chapter I've ever written. The idea was, how can I _show_ that two people love each other deeply... but totally avoid the easy way of showing that (e.g. kissing).

Now - if I can stop and blow your mind for a second - this chapter was not originally in my outline. The original outline went straight from **Tortured Measures** to **The Future**, but I decided I needed one more transitional chapter in Act 2. THIS CONTENT DID NOT ORIGINALLY EXIST and now it's so integral to Bucky's development. Crazy!

There's also a plot/poetry point that I'm surprised no one's noticed yet. Huh. Oh well.

I appreciate all of you who expressed concern for my health, and i promise that me posting this has not taken anything away from the taking care of my health - it's quite a nice distraction. Much of the next chapter, **The Future**, is already written, so I imagine it'll probably be ready by next weekend.

I love my reviewers: AquaBluey, SunnySides, bananraberrybat, Guest, Goldenfightergirl, Lucy Jacob, xRaspberryx, Sanguinary Tide, rosafern, tuckerjnp1, Momochan77, SomebodyWhoCares, LoveFiction2019, Writings in the Dark, Alyy, ILostMyGrace, StressedButWellDressed, UnknownReaderHasJoined, and nekokairi!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	18. The Future

**November 1st, 2015  
One year, three months in Akureyri, Iceland**

The moment when the little red cabin came into view on the hill was always the best part of Bucky's day. Finally at the end of the fishing season once more, he wouldn't have to leave quite to often. Winter's grip was steadily tightening around the island, especially here in the north.

He could see the vague shape of Alice moving around the greenhouse on the sunny side of the cabin, but when a loud shriek came from the greenhouse, a shot of fear stabbed Bucky's gut with a hot knife.

The knife in his boot was the fastest to retrieve between his current location and Alice's greenhouse. He didn't hear his bag hit the ground five paces behind as he bolted up the gravel drive. He considered briefly - very briefly - detouring into the cabin and grabbing the pistol he kept in the kitchen cabinets, but he worried he didn't have time.

He wrenched open the handle of the greenhouse, the metal screeching against his left hand and the hinges shrieking as he pulled them in the wrong direction. If the door had been glass instead of sturdy acrylic he was certain it would have shattered instantly.

He'd expected to find her grappling with an assailant, preferably with a weapon in her hand. He'd expected to find her possibly holding a dead snake of some kind, also preferably holding a weapon in her other hand.

Knowing Alice, he _should_ have expected her shriek to be one of overenthusiastic joy as she he found her holding a terracotta pot up to the light, dirt-smudge fingers examining a plant's new leaves.

She looked over at him with joy sparkling in her eyes. "Oh, Bucky, great timing; look!" she cried, her fingers tenderly supporting the new shoot and budding leaf emerging from the base of her banana pup. "It sprouted new leaves!"

"Oh," Bucky breathed, slowly steadying his breath. "That's good." His heart was beating so fast. He'd imagined any number of terrible things happening to the little blonde, and an equally large number of responses – all of them swaddled in fear and anguish.

"Is something wrong?" She seemed to notice his demeanor. "What's the knife for?"

"I… I thought you might need a gardening tool. Do you have your pistol?" He asked, distracting her with a question as he put his knife away.

"What?" she asked. "Oh! Of course I do; it's… hmm." She tapped a dirty index finger to her chin, leaving a smudge of soil. "Maybe I left it inside?"

"You're supposed to keep it with you, Doll." His fear was rapidly changing into frustration.

"I know," she slouched like a guilty child. "I'll go get it."

She didn't seem to understand the panic she'd caused. He needed Alice healthy and whole to stay sane himself. He needed her presence around in the evenings, with her standing in the kitchen and commenting idly about her poor cooking skills. He needed to see the sleepy fluff of her hair as she shook off a few hours of sleep. He stood in the doorway, brain still buzzing with all the awful ways he might lose her that constantly plagued his nightmares: _fire, drowning, poison, shot by a sniper, shot by accident, dead by my hands, dead by my hands, dead by my hands. _

"Hey," she poked his chest, "you need to move. You're blocking the door."

He stepped back as her voice chased away his thoughts. She raised an eyebrow as if to ask about his silence, but thought better of it. "You know what I totally need?" she asked. "A little secret door between the greenhouse and the cabin. An escape hatch!"

A short breath like the smallest of laughs pushed past his lips. "I'm not making you an escape hatch."

Alice shrugged her shoulders. "If you don't I'll just punch a hole in the wall. Eyeball it and everything." She shuddered fiercely as she entered the cabin, holding the edges of her coat tight instead of taking it off.

"Did you turn off the heat before you went outside?" Bucky asked, walking across the cabin to check the thermostat."

"Not that I remember, but that's not saying much. Now let's see, where did I leave it…" she mumbled, rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. "Found it!" she declared after whipping the lid off of the heavy dutch oven in the lower cabinet.

Pausing with one hand on the thermostat, Bucky resisted the urge to facepalm. "Why did you - you know what, nevermind. Is it clean?"

"Absolutely." Alice wiped the barrel idly against her sweater.

"Clean it," he ordered, pointing to the coffee table. "_Now._"

Alice grumbled darkly and pulled one of the sofa's matching chairs close to the low table, letting the feet screech against the floors. Bucky ignored her as he stared at the conflicting needles on the thermostat. "I have to check the heat pump; you remember how to do that properly?"

Alice stared him dead in the eyes as she removed the magazine, cleared the round from the chamber, and removed the slide and barrel in two smooth movements. "Nope."

"Gun oil's under the sink," Bucky reminded her.

"Sass is in the pantry," she shot back. The closing front door cut off her glare at being treated like a child.

Fading afternoon light meant rapidly cooling outdoors, and Bucky intended to make his inspection a quick one. He didn't like the cold - never had - but his time with HYDRA certainly hadn't helped.

Bucky pulled the protective grate off of the top of the heat pump and glanced inside the column. "Damn it_,"_ he swore. A thick layer of ice had collected on the inside, coating the fan blades. At some point in the day it had probably kicked on and then promptly shredded itself into twisted bits of steel, fighting against the solid ice block.

One fan blade had shot off, lodging itself on the delicate metal condenser plates. A thick liquid dripped slowly onto the concrete pad supporting the now totally destroyed heat pump.

"Damn," he swore again, putting the protective panel back on for no reasonable purpose. He stared at it, as if threatening it with more violence might magically make it function as a heating unit again.

No such luck.

"Well, it's really dead this time," Bucky said, leaving his coat on as he re-entered the cabin.

Alice had put donned another scarf in his absence, but at least was still diligently disassembling her pistol onto a clean cloth on the coffee table. "I'll call Artur in the morning and see if he's got a replacement in stock."

"I can do it," he offered. It involved a slightly long walk into town to use a payphone, and they had a long and cold night ahead of them.

Alice counted the pieces on her cloth, straightening a spring so it lined up with a nearby pin. "He'll give me a discount."

"And he'll ask you to marry him again," he countered, taking a seat in the chair opposite Alice.

"Maybe I'll say yes? He's, what, eighty-two? Younger than you, old man." Alice grinned, waggling her eyebrows suggestively and Bucky couldn't help but chuckle..

"You cold, Doll?" he asked as he watched her hands shake slightly as she opened the tin of gun oil.

She shrugged a shoulder. "A little, but my mutation is keeping up."

"So what you're saying is that it's so cold your _life-saving mutation_ is kicking in?"

Her hands stilled, closing the lid on the gun oil. "Well, when you put it like _that.._."

Bucky shook his head as he stood and threw a blanket at her. "You stay under there, I'll get a fire started."

Alice wrapped it around her shoulders to leave her hands free. "No arguments here."

Bucky paused as a lingering sense of deja vu distracted from the moment. He shook his head, grabbing a small stack of dry wood from the floor next to the wood stove and started to assemble a base inside the cast iron box.

Alice hummed slightly to herself as she gently scrubbed the barrel, checked it against the light, and gave it one final scrub.

Bits of newspaper caught the little match flame and crinkled in the heat, spreading along the base of the stove and licking the underside of the dry wood. He touched the match to a few other clusters before, satisfied that it had caught properly, he tossed the match into the wood.

Bucky watched the fire as it walked across the dry wood, reaching with little fingers and toes to scorch and crackle along paths and valleys. He closed the door on the wood stove and checked the vents to make sure he didn't accidentally smother the new flames.

"Did I do alright?" she asked, sliding the cleaned and reassembled pistol on its cloth across the coffee table.

Removing the magazine, still empty, he checked her work. "Good job."

"Thanks!" she beamed as if he'd thrown confetti and held a party in her honor. "I'm going to get a book - you want anything?"

"Not right now."

She slid across the floor as she skated along in her socks, disappearing into her bedroom briefly to retrieve said book. She slid back, making it almost five feet in a single slide. She tipped backwards into her chair but quickly righted herself and draped the blanket sloppily over her lap.

The cover had a rich, red poppy spread across most of the thick paper, spreading to the back as well. "Did you buy that just because of the cover?"

"Maybe." Alice flushed pink. "It's wrong, but it's close enough to catch my interest."

She held the edges of the pages delicately, like she was afraid to break the book's spine or bend the paper. The hum of the fire's breath and the turning of pages made for the only music in the cabin as late afternoon settled into an early Icelandic night.

Her focus on the paper and the slow bat of her eyelashes as she relaxed into reading mesmerized him. Bucky wondered when he had memorized the regular and irregular pattern of the little black fans that brushed against her cheeks, and the occasional twitch of her lips as she read to herself. Alice usually mouthed along with words she'd call 'beautiful', and sigh after she read something sad.

Bucky wondered when he'd started needing her to be around just to feel at peace. He wondered if he had even been without her at all when held by HYDRA, as her voice had never really left him. Alice had been with him, in one way or another, since 1943. _Seventy-two years of Alice_. He wondered what it meant that seventy-two years didn't feel like enough time.

If she knew he was staring, she didn't let on. He watched her and remembered what it had felt like to love her in 1944. She had fascinated him as some strange and unusual creature that escaped cages and worked magic and could do everything but _fly_. Her dark eyes moved from one page to the next with patient care, and he remembered what it had felt like to feel an utter terror that he might never see those eyes again. He wondered what it meant that he had felt the same way only an hour before, charging into the greenhouse.

"Tell me how you loved me." The words came out in a tone he hadn't intended, but Alice took no offense. She looked up from her book, her eyes glowing in the little firelight cast by the little window in the wood stove.

She never asked why he asked the questions he did, and this was no exception, but she closed her book slowly. Bucky noticed she forgot a bookmark – as she often did – and she would probably complain later that she'd lost her place. _Page 137_, he noted.

"I only got to kiss you one time in 1944, and I think…" she sucked in a deep breath and held it. She wrapped her jacket tighter around her shoulders and closed her eyes. The fire crackled as the logs settled in the wood stove. "I think that's probably when I really knew."

"I was in an improvised medical tent, and the doctor was finishing bandaging my gunshot wound. You yelled my name through the camp, and I knew you were angry. You found me and," she chuckled, "you read me the riot act. You'd only ever yelled at me like that once before, and I'd done something not quite so stupid. I thought that was it, I thought you hated me and I'd… I'd lost something."

Alice tilted her head slightly, like a mirror of her memory. "But then you got all soft, and you said how you thought I'd died. You said it like… you were thanking God himself that I hadn't died. It was beautiful, really. And then you kissed me."

She held that moment in silence, with a deep breath that she released with a little sigh. "I'd never been kissed like that. You kissed me like you knew what you were doing, and there wasn't enough of me you could have in one kiss."

Alice's head tilted back slightly, trying to replicate some nearly-forgotten sensation. "It's hard to remember, and I want so badly to tell you as much as I can."

She scrunched her nose briefly. "I remember touching your nose with mine. I remember you smelled like gunpowder and smoke and sweat. I remember you tasted a bit like coffee, but only a little bit. I remember the feeling of your hands on my face. I remember… I remember the way you used to say my name." The barest whisper of her words felt like a confession, or a prayer. "When time took everything else from me, I still had that."

Alice opened her eyes, and the magic of the moment was lost. Bucky let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. _Five,_ he counted subconsciously.

"But we aren't those people anymore, are we?" She looked at him, blinking to clear the mist from her eyes. "I'm not really Lieutenant Shaw, and you're not really Sergeant Barnes. Not those people, anyway."

"No," he agreed, "we aren't."

"I think they were really in love," she said it reverently. "I don't even know what that looks like nowadays."

Bucky thought about it. "Love is patient. And kind."

That felt like a memory, like something from a hot afternoon in a sweltering church with his Ma rapping on his knuckles to keep him attentive. _Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. _Bucky looked down at his clasped hands as the sensation faded to the background of his memory.

He looked at the intertwined metal and human fingers, and thought of everything those hands had cost. He thought about everything he'd gained in a few short months. "Love's risking everything to help, and encourage… encouraging me to try new things. Reminding me of what it like to feel like a man, not just a weapon. Love is not shaming me for not knowing things, but just saying how damn _excited_ they are for me to get to try all these things for the first time. It's pouring out a heart from a cup that never runs empty because love's filling it from their soul."

"If that's not love…" Bucky chanced a glance at Alice, and the rest of the sentence died on his lips. _If that's not love, what is?_

Tears ran freely down her face, and her mouth had fallen open into a little curved shape of surprise. "You're such a fucking _Dodo_," she cried. She buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking as emotion ran through her unchecked.

"Hey, I didn't mean to make you cry, doll," Bucky tried to soothe, crossing the space between them to kneel in front of her chair. He set his hand on her knee, squeezing it encouragingly.

Alice crumpled into his arms, her knee cracking against the hard wooden floor in a way Bucky didn't like at all. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her head there. "I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of everything you've done to just be _you_, and I can't think of a better way to say that right now, so I need you to just nod and agree with me like you know what I'm talking about," she mumbled.

Bucky nodded, though he was almost sure he _did_ know what she was talking about. "Doll," he said, trying to pry her arms from around his neck. "Look at me, doll," he asked, a little more forcefully.

"Uh-uh," Alice protested. "I've got water all over my face and I don't know how it got there but it's not pretty."

"I don't care; look at me." Alice's face was indeed a mess of tears. She was not a pretty crier; never had been. She wore her emotions wrapped around her body like a shimmering veil, only occasionally tilted back from her face as she revealed a wicked grin.

Bucky could still hear the old pastor's voice, ringing through an echoing chamber. _Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves. _The voice rang through a hot church, accompanied by the sounds of little paper fans and the weak sniffles of an emotional crowd. A set of eyes, barely visible through a thin white veil, had captured Bucky's attention even as she gazed at another. As a young boy, her glowing expression had drawn his attention.

_Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known._ The pastor smiled down at a blushing bride and her humble groom, kneeling at the altar as he blessed them. It had been a wedding; in a sweltering June they had huddled in the pews and gazed upon love when it hadn't seemed so rare in the world.

"Bucky?" Alice drew him back to the present. Her tears had dried away and the redness in her eyes had faded.

He didn't have the words for the memory that had drawn him in. Some part of his brain had connected Alice to that memory of a wedding, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. _No,_ he thought, _I know why_.

When she looked at him, her eyes sparkled with joy and affection that she never tried to conceal. Written in her eyes, in the fidget of her hands before she'd just decided to reach for his or squeeze his arm in support.

_One._

When he called his name, when she laughed it across a room or when she sat upside down on the couch because she really needed to focus on her book, she said his name with reverence for the word itself in a way that seemed to say _I'm happy you're here_.

_Two._

When she planted herbs in her tiny greenhouse and cooked in their even smaller kitchen she always asked what he liked, or what he wanted, helping to remind him of flavors and textures but never forcing him to eat something he didn't like.

_Three._

With her cooking, her plants, the laundry she hung to dry in the sun whenever she could, the shampoo she still made like she had in 1944, the cabin always smelled like a home. It smelled like a place that she loved, _for_ someone she loved.

_Four._

"I think if I had to…" he said, choosing his words carefully. "I would say that you love me?" He offered it like a solution – like a reasoning to give her comfort. If she did not believe herself to be capable, he wanted her to know that, of all things, he felt… loved.

Her face morphed rapidly through expressions of surprise, or hope, and then fear. She rubbed her hands anxiously together, scratching at one with the other and leaving angry red marks. "You wouldn't say that if you knew what I'd done."

"There's not a damn thing that would change my mind." He said it with confidence, but something about her certainty let a thread of hesitation wrap around his words.

"That's definitely not true," Alice countered. "You barely ask me questions that you _should _be asking - some part of you doesn't want to know, but I need you to know. I need you to know something. I figured out how to kill me – to beat my mutation. Drowning – you'd have to drown me, and make sure my body stays underwater."

HIs mind rebelled at the very concept. "Alice, what-?"

Words spewed from her lips, barbed and poisonous. "I'm the reason you suffered, Buck. _I'm _the reason you had to be the Winter Soldier. I wanted to tell you, but… I wanted to make sure you really understood what I took from you. You never asked me how I was there and here, and you never asked about my mutation, so I just thought you didn't want to know, but I _need_ you to know." She pulled at her sleeves but looked like she wanted to claw her own skin off.

"I'm not from the same time as you and Steve. I was sent back in time to save Steve's life, and because of that… you had to fall. I never meant to leave, I never _meant_ to let it happen, but I couldn't see all the cards; couldn't see the _game_ he was playing with my choices!" Alice looked up at him with defeat; a hollow-eyed, aching grief wrapped around her soul. "But it was me."

She laughed but it sounded more like a dry sob. "So, there – now you can hate me. You can drown me, and I'd be gone forever, and maybe you can find some peace in that because I never worked up the courage to try again."

_Again_. A sharp pain stabbed through his heart.

She continued, "and I won't blame you for hating me, because I hate myself, I _hate_ what I let happen to you, that I couldn't see what he was making me do-"

"_Alice_," Bucky interrupted sharply, "_stop_."

She fell silent, though her shoulders shook with unshed tears.

A million thoughts ran through his brain.

_What if?_

What if she'd never gone back in time, and Steve had died? Bucky would have tried to carry the shield, to carry Steve's legacy. _Dead._

What if she'd never gone back in time, and hadn't treated him for pneumonia in Austria, or any number of men for wounds and fevers and sepsis? _Dead._

What if she hadn't gone down with the LST-6, and she'd stayed with the Commandos? Would she have fallen from the train instead? If she'd saved him, would she have stormed the HYDRA base with him and Steve? Shot by any number of guns? _Dead._

His thoughts shifted, following the tracks of a slowly lumbering train of thought. If he could wonder what might have happened if Alice had stayed in 1944, he could easily picture what must have happened when she didn't.

_What if?_

What if coming back to her original time had been as painful as falling from a train? No delight in her eyes and no laughter over coffee. _Again._

What if she saw their faces in the night, as he had, and heard their voices in the wind, as he had, and begged for the universe to make it stop? _Again._

What if, finding herself forced to live with her grief and her pain, the glowing sunrise inside her chest got swallowed up by all that darkness? _Again._

_I never worked up the courage to try again_.

Knowing Alice as he did, there was no way he could ever believe that she'd intentionally let any of history happen as it did. She'd fought, bled, screamed and thrown her body into danger to keep safe men she hardly knew. Just like him, she walked through time with a tight veil over her eyes, held in place by some huge invisible hand, just trying to follow a path by feeling along with her feet.

He hadn't thought about it, but it made sense; all of her coping mechanisms and mental tools had to come from somewhere. She'd never said a word, not _one word_. The man on the jet had tried to warn him about her fear, about something that haunted her even before she'd gone to 1943.

Bucky wasn't exactly happy with everything he'd gone through, but the idea of Alice taking even a portion, the smallest _fraction_ of his suffering… there'd be no other way for her to relate so well; to pull him out of sudden flashbacks and know what dreams are a silent torture.

"Why didn't you say anything?" His soft voice echoed in the quiet cabin.

Somehow, that was the question that broke the dam behind Alice's eyes. "I'm so sorry, Bucky - I was trying to do the right thing, and I didn't know what the right thing _was_, and I didn't want to hurt the Commandos-"

"No," he cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand, "not that. Why didn't you tell me you needed help? Did you think I couldn't help you?"

She huffed, frustratedly. "That's not - you don't get it! I'm the reason you got tortured, that you lost your arm, that they froze you all those years; I'm the reason everything awful that has ever happened, happened!"

"Alice," he barked, grabbing her shoulders. "Stop trying to sabotage this."

"I'm not!" she yelled back.

"Don't lie to me," he ordered. "You're too bad at it."

She kind of crumpled in on herself, shoulders sagging out of his loose grip as grief tried to take her in its hollow hands.

Thinking back on the year he could see the signs of her hidden suffering, and a desperation to make up for her perceived wrongs, and not just lost time.

It should have made him angry, knowing she had played a part in everything, but how could he be angry? She'd saved Steve's life, and if in saving his life more than a few times she had let him fall into HYDRA's hands it had only led him back to her eventually. Without it, he very well could have lost her forever; separated by three generations and a handful of wars.

She'd never lied to him and had never tried to. She kept every promise she'd ever made to him, shed her life like water from an otter's back to take his hand and bring him to Iceland where he could become whole again. She'd hidden her pain and suffering so he could focus on himself.

_Selfish_, he thought bitterly of himself.

It couldn't change his image of her, or take away the gifts she'd given. She remained constant and inconstant; the rising and setting of the sun, creator and destroyer. A life without Alice; the thought was like trying to imagine a world without the sun. Her light could burn, cast shadows, or even spitefully retreat, but she'd never left him.

Alice of the sunrise; of waking up to breakfast and open windows letting in the summer air. Of warm breads and linens.

Alice of the sunset; of applauding the fading light and quiet conversations in the dark of winter. Of waking from nightmares and comforting whispers.

He'd always thought that she stood in that light, just waiting for him to join her in a warm and golden place. But in the cabin as she opened the wellspring of her suffering and let him see that deep, dark water he realized she'd stood in the same empty darkness, hands and heart open and reaching for him so they could climb together and find the sun again.

Bucky took her right hand, gently, with his left. As always, as ever, she did not shy away from the steel. "If hate yourself, you shouldn't," he reminded her. "You had as much control over it as I did about what came after."

"I could have-" she tried to argue, but he gripped her hands tightly in warning and she snapped her mouth shut.

"No," he said, "you couldn't. You know that."

"It's not right," she whispered sadly.

"I don't care," he said firmly. "I'd have lost you."

He turned her hands over to run his fingers over hers, knowing he wouldn't find callouses there even with her laborious job. "I'm so sorry I let you suffer alone." He looked down at her – so much smaller than him, even just sitting on the floor – and offered a fond smile. "You're not alone anymore."

_One._

Bucky leaned forward, hesitating a breath away from her lips. "Alice Hrafnhildur Sigynsdottir, I love you." He could taste the mint in the air; the sharp, raw taste of the new leaves Alice chewed like most people chewed commercial gum. "And whatever you're about to try to say, I know you love me."

_Two._

He held his breath as her eyes darted across his face, searching for any sign of humor or deceit. "I love you," he repeated, "and you love me." She drew in a sharp breath, biting her lip to hold back a denial.

She tried to lower her head, to break the intense but Bucky couldn't allow that. He lifted her chin gently with both hands just grazing the outside of her jaw, and she did not shy away from the cold steel. "Alice," he begged, "please say something."

He ran his thumbs along her cheeks as tears threatened to fall; Iceland's smallest waterfall. Her skin held no blemish, only the texture of the hidden petals of rare flowers.

_Three._

"How can you just say something like that?" she asked, her voice unsteady.

"Like what, Doll?"

"You can't just-" she hiccuped as emotion caught up with her. "You can't just go from making a fire and talking about death and torture and time to… to _that."_

"Alright," he backed up slightly but still helped to hold her head straight. "I can start over if you want. Alice Hraf-" Alice cut him off as she fell into him, like shedding her fear and burdens all at once as she kissed him with a desperation reserved for dying men.

She tasted like he remembered, like he had tasted in the air a moment ago, like he had tasted on her lips nearly a century ago and had never stopped searching for that taste. Raw mint leaves rolled between fingers.

She climbed into his lap, not giving in an inch as she continued to kiss him fervently. Her knees fell to either side of his hips and he leaned back against the front of the sofa, as she nearly pushed him back with her force.

Her hair draped around his face like a curtain and enveloped him in the clover-like scent unique to Alice. It smelled like laughter in moonlight, at sunsets, and at mid-day. It smelled like quiet, intimate moments and secrets shared in the dark.

_Four_.

Her hands chased under his shirt, yanking it over his head in one swift motion. The hem caught on one of the plates of his left arm and the fabric tore. "You ruined my shirt," he chided as she examined the tear.

Alice snickered and tossed it aside. "Whoops," she said, her light tone hardly remorseful. "Good thing you've got plenty more,"

"Oh really?" he asked, pulling up on the hem of her shirt. "Hm, I don't think I do." Alice's face disappeared briefly as he relieved her of her shirt – being careful not to tear it.

A tinkle of metal on metal chimed merrily as Alice's copper bullet swung freely in the air on its long golden chain, the edges catching at the peak of swing as it caught against the lace of her undergarments.

She leaned in to him as her skin prickled in the cold air, taking advantage of his heat. "Mhmm; in the closet in my room."

Bucky wrapped his arms under the seat of her hips and lifted her smoothly into the air. "I think I'd need you to show me. I've forgotten where that is."

She weighed practically nothing as he carried her. He'd ripped open armored doors and lifted steel beams in demonstrations of strength, and he couldn't be more grateful for his ability to carry that women the twelve long steps across the cabin to her bed.

This time she didn't shriek when she fell back onto the bed, because she pulled him down with her as if she had the strength to force him. He'd only really held her in his arms when she was waking from a nightmare and found this to be much more his speed; better than the little touches in the kitchen, and better than hands and hips just barely grazing as they danced.

His grip around her waist felt better when she arched her back up to meet him. His fingers fluttered over her ribs as a distant memory reminded him _don't touch there, she's hurt there_, and he couldn't shake it because he was so damn distracted.

Bucky found new places on her body to indulge in; two little dimples at the small of her back that barely rose above the waistband of her jeans but held his fingertips just perfectly, the taste of the hollow in her throat and the wild texture of her hair in his hands.

They'd both danced this dance before, just not with each other. It was a whole new experience that involved more laughter than he remembered.

Alice laughed as she tossed her bra and it completely missed her laundry bin, as was completely normal, and Bucky couldn't help but laugh at her completely un-sexy method of shedding her jeans; standing up and stomping on alternating legs to work the denim down to the floor like a toddler having a tantrum.

She silenced his laughter with a roll of her hips as she turned, like the very act of moving across her floor was an intimate dance.

A naked Alice was not to be denied. She moved around the bed just out of his reach, capturing his attention so utterly that Bucky's metal fingers slipped off the metal button of his jeans in the first try.

He hadn't been naked in front of anyone for a while, certainly not a dame. His mind wandered for the briefest of seconds as he tried to remember, but took a harsh left turn into an icy pit. _Get the Asset cleaned up_, Commander ordered. Metal on metal screeching, a feeling of barely-not-solid water splashing over his body, of being pulled like a broken and unwanted doll, like-

He was brought back when Alice's hands cupped his cheeks and her forehead pressed against his. "I love you." She said it so gently, so reverently; like nothing he'd ever heard before. It felt more sacred than a prayer or a secret. "James Buchanan Barnes, I love you."

_Five._

Not in HYDRA's hands, but Alice's, just sitting in the edge of her bed. "I'm here." He nudged his nose against hers, nuzzling it briefly.

"Hello, my love; you left me for a second there." She kissed him once. "I missed you."

He leaned back, drawing her back onto the bed with him. "I don't wanna leave you again."

"That's good," she agreed, her hips hovering just above his and so close he could feel the need radiating from her skin, "because I don't share what's mine."

His hands gripped Alice's hips, thumbs stroking her too-soft skin as if in a trance. "Are you…? Is this… what you want?" He was swiftly losing the ability to string coherent sentences together.

She stroked a hand lazily down his chest, chewing on her lip as she carefully composed her next thought. "I lost you, before. It felt like losing half my heart - _all _of my heart. So, getting you back...I didn't think I would feel alive again."

Alice took his hand - his left hand, the tool of destruction and violence and brutality fused to his body without his consent - from her hip and placed it on her bare chest just above her heart. Her pulse fluttered excitedly, thrumming through her skin like a bird trapped in her flesh. "I want to give you everything I can if only to show you how grateful I am to be alive with you."

"You don't have to-"

She cut him off, "I want to; I want _you." _Her cheeks flushed pink again and some of the confident rise of her spine withered away the longer Bucky stared in open disbelief. "What?"

With one hand on her hip, and the other resting just over her heart, Bucky stared up at Alice and hoped that once, just this _one_ time, he'd be able to find the right words. "Doll…" He choked on his first attempt. "I missed you."

Alice smiled broadly and leaned down to kiss him. He let his hand tangle in her hair, and no amount of skin he could touch was enough. The heat he found inside her drew out all the dark places inside his mind and strangled them with ecstasy.

Bucky grabbed at Alice as she did him, finding leverage on bedposts and frenetic tides of movement between them; an ebb and flow of legs and hips, interrupted by hands and tongues and moans and whispers of names.

They couldn't feel the chill gather in the cabin as the fire went out. Didn't hear the cry of night-birds or the rush of wind against the walls.

The universe shrank to the size of the bedroom, and perhaps even just a foot or so beyond the edge of the bed with its twisted sheets and sweat-soaked limbs entangled there.

Passionate cries dwindled and relaxed into little giggles and reverent kisses. Sweet touches and silly jokes didn't try to hide lingering fear, just gave it a new name and a seat at the table. Fear, whose name could also be grief or obsession, became heartache; an ache whose first soothing poultice had just been applied.

"Are you sleepy?" Alice asked, tucked against his chest and tracing shapes on his skin.

"Not a bit," Bucky replied, content to stay in bed forever with his arm around Alice. He worried that if he slept he might wake from whatever amazing dream he was having at that moment.

"Well, I'm going to get my book," she announced. She slipped out of bed, her pale skin almost glowing in the light from the bedside lamp.

"Hurry back." Bucky watched her move, carefully watching for any signs that he might have hurt her but none appeared. Any bruises she might have, deep depressions on her skin from gripping too hard or marks of passion, had already been washed away by her mutation. He knew she should have at least one or two as she'd dished out a fair number herself, but he was relieved that constant and inconstant Alice remained as perfect as before.

"Ooh! It's freezing!" Alice padded across the floor on bare toes, picking up her book from the edge of the sofa and scurrying quickly back to bed. She dove under the covers as Bucky held them open, burying herself in the warmth.

She sat up against the headboard and flipped through the pages with a thumb. "Hells bells," she grumbled. "I forgot a bookmark."

"Page 137," Bucky reminded her.

"Weirdo," Alice shot back, but opened the correct page. Half buried under the fluffy comforter, Bucky rolled over and wrapped an arm around her waist, resting his cheek on her stomach.

"Read to me," he poked her side.

Alice poked back with her toes, idly bumping whatever knee was closest. "You've got eyes, read it after."

"Be nicer." He poked her side again.

Alice didn't look up from her page. "I do what I want."

"So I'm what you want?" Bucky asked suggestively, letting his hands wander slightly.

Alice rolled her eyes. She spoke softly, in a special tone reserved for reading aloud.

_Enough now of the wet eyes of winter.__Not one single tear.  
__Hour by hour, green is beginning,  
__the essential season, leaf by leaf,  
__until, by spring's name, we are summoned  
__to take part in its joy._

Bucky closed his eyes, letting the vibration of her voice carry through her stomach and resonate against his skin.

_How wonderful, its eternal openness,  
__clean air, the promise of flower,  
__the full moon leaving  
__its calling card in the foliage,  
__men and women trailing from the beach  
__with a wet basket of shifting silver._

Her hand lazily ran through his hair, knuckles lightly massaging his scalp. Her voice and her hands and a deep satisfaction in his chest swept away any reserves of strength he had left.

_Like love, like a medal,  
__I welcome it,  
__I take it all in,  
__from south, from north, from violins,  
__from dogs,  
__lemons, clay,  
__from newly liberated air,  
__machines smelling of mystery,  
__storm-colored shopping,  
__everything I need:  
__orange blossoms, string,  
__grapes like topazes,  
__the whiff of waves._

The poem, somehow too deeply poignant, called to his soul as he drifted off to sleep in Alice's welcoming embrace.

_I gather it up  
__endlessly,  
__effortlessly,  
__I breathe.  
__I dry my shirt in the wind,  
__and my opened heart.  
__The sky falls  
__and falls.  
__From my glass,  
__I drink  
__pure joy._

* * *

A/N: We've spent most of Act 2 following Bucky's development as he works on being a normal person again. I'm a little surprised that no one was like "Alice seems a little too hunky-dory considering she was barely holding her life together bruh", but I guess I did a good job of hiding it, so y'all get to realize it along with Bucky. She's not magically all better now, just like he's not, but they're going to do much better overall.

I think this is the longest chapter I've written for anything ever. Somebody go fact-check that.

I clearly can't write smut so I didn't even try.

I'm posting this from my phone because I can't keep it from all of you one second longer! Will probably edit for typos and some formatting tomorrow.

Many thanks to my reviewers: Momochan77, Lucy Jacob, rosafern, Guest, xRaspberryx, SomebodyWhoCares, TimeLords Rule, tuckerjnp1, TikiKiki, LoveFiction2019, AquaBluey, Sanguinary Tide, marylopez0812 and readingtilldawn!

**PLEASE REVIEW**


	19. Catching Up

**August 4, 2014  
Foxhole Barns, Maryland**

White could never be considered a color of concealment, as it almost glowed in the vivid midnight moonlight. Moving through the dense woodlands surrounding the picturesque valley, the broad-shouldered man dressed in a white cape and cowl and blue combat suit wasn't exactly hiding. His skull mask grinned hauntingly in the shadows, finding endless amusement at every turn.

He moved easily through the woodlands, legs avoiding gopher holes and dry twigs on instinct and repetitive practice so he could keep his chin lifted, looking for his target instead of watching his footing.

The rough perimeter check turned up a dead body, half-strangled with maggots crawling out of a hollowed-out eye socket. "Ouch, buddy," he muttered as he flagged it for disposal, tossing a beacon onto the corpse's chest. "Well, clearly I ain't the only baddie the Hub sent…"

The body had been there for more than a day or two, so he moved on to the farm's buildings, convinced his target must have moved on by now.

The apartment's locked windows were easy enough to pick and spread wide, and long white curtains billowed in with the fresh breeze.

He tapped a foot against the floor, careful not to dip his boot in the blood. "If I were a _second _dead body, where would I hide?"

Humming a tune he couldn't place, he opened doors and drawers carefully, doing his best not to disturb anything that might indicate he'd been looking around. The bedroom appeared neat, though the bed had been slept in somewhat recently and left unmade.

No dead body.

Few photos and personal effects; the home already looked staged so he wouldn't need to do much. Inside the bathroom he found fewer toiletries than he might expect in a woman's home, and her single lonely shampoo bottle didn't smell like any commercial product he recognized. _Homemade, maybe?_ Odd, for such a wealthy household.

Still, no dead body.

The pantry was full of simple foods, mostly ingredients for making things from scratch. It lacked the fancy bottled waters imported from Fiji and excessive _organic_ stickers that also typically marked an affluent household.

Ordinarily that would mean new money, but the home lacked those signs as well - no obscenely expensive art hanging on the walls, or drawers full of designer clothes and designer jewels. She owned a few pairs of well-loved shoes, one jacket per season, and a modest assortment of heritage-quality clothes.

Her office desk remained equally modest - nothing of a cutting-edge design, but utilitarian and clean.

And no dead body. "Interesting," he murmured. No dead body, and no signs that one had been moved or disposed of; he could only assume that the barn's owner hadn't actually died. The _how_ was escaping him at that moment, but it threw in a very interesting variable.

His search method changed, going further in depth as he added the barn's owner to his target list. Her desk lock wasn't even locked, and opened to reveal two expired passports; one American, one Icelandic.

_Alice Hrafnhildur Sigynsdottir_

"Well hello there, Alice. Sentimental creature, aren't you? Kept your old passports, but didn't take 'em with you; you hoping to come back some day?" He tapped the passports against the desk. "So where'd you go?"

A sweeping gaze through the room yielded no instant answers, but a conspicuous absence of family photos set him thinking. "Dont'cha have family?" he asked the open air. "Or are ya hiding them?"

A heavy weight dropped onto his shoulders and he dropped the passports. "_Motherfucker!"_ he yelled, grabbing at the sharp creature attacking his head. He grappled with it before it launched away, landing on the desk. An angry ginger cat, all hackles raised and spitting with rage, hissed at him. The large barn cat arched its back threateningly.

"You've got some balls, I'll give you that," he commented, snatching the passports from the desk and leaving the cat to its fit. "You're lucky I like cats." Backing out of the office, he spotted a true prize. A cell phone, buzzing on the kitchen's island.

_Sam the Man_, the caller ID flashed. He let it ring and go to voicemail before opening the phone. Not even protected with a passcode or anything - so careless. He leaned against the island and flipped through her contacts, slowing his scroll when he came across something that seemed important.

_Sigyn & Will_

Oddly enough, the phone number and address had been deleted, but the names had remained. _Sigynsdottir_… _Sigyn? _He put the phone in his pocket for safekeeping. "I guess Taskmaster should get cleaned up before he goes to meet a Lady's parents."

* * *

**September 5, 2014  
York, Pennsylvania**

Taskmaster knocked on the deep brown door, testing his knuckles against the grain. He frowned at the scars and wracked his brain, trying to remember how he'd got them.

_Eagle Fist_

_Oolong tea_

_Smell of morning mist_

No memory of scars, just sensations tied to a muscle-memory of action. He knew that was always the way - memory of actions, memorization of skills and facts, but no memory for faces, or family. DId he have a family? He couldn't remember.

"Can I help you?" An older, trembling voice asked. He hadn't even heard the door open, but flashed a personable smile as he lifted his head.

"Good afternoon, ma'am. Are you the mother of one…" he checked his notes unnecessarily. "Alice Sig… sigen…"

The woman's face grew instantly concerned. "Sigynsdottir? Yes, I'm Sigyn and she's my daughter - is she in some kind of trouble?"

"I'd love to comment on that, ma'am, but unfortunately this is an ongoing investigation." He pulled out the fake badge and flashed it briefly. "Detective Masters, FBI. May I come in?"

Civilians trusted too easily. It only took the fake badge and a mispronounced name to find himself inside the home, hot tea in hand and seated like a guest in the living room.

Sigyn wrung her hands, the hunch of her shoulders telegraphing her discomfort. "I find it hard to believe that my daughter is mixed up in all of this."

He had to play the part he'd taken, this new mask that felt far less comfortable than his preferred skull face. But he took notes as she spoke, nodding along at descriptions and details that might help locate one Alice Sigynsdottir. "Can you think of where she might have gone? Any friends who might take her in?"

Sigyn averted her eyes and her hands stilled from the nervous fidgeting. Taskmaster's focus was drawn to it in an instant. Of all the questions he expected to make her uncomfortable, he wouldn't have put money on it being that one.

"We haven't spoken much since she left school; she's been so... distant." She sighed. "We even moved down to Pennsylvania to be closer so we could reconnect, but she won't see us. I suppose that just leaves friends from school."

The vagueness of the answer bothered him. "Which school would that be?" He glanced down at his nonsense notes, hoping that the change in his attention would lead her to be honest in her answer.

Sigyn clasped her hands in her lap, obviously trying to avoid the anxious fidgeting. "Xavier's; for Gifted Youngsters."

His pen stilled. Sigyn didn't seem to notice, but glanced instead at the front door. "My husband, William, will be home soon. I think you should leave; it's hard for him to talk about Alice." She stood, picking up his barely-touched tea from the coffee table.

"And why is that?" Taskmaster asked, standing as well. He didn't want this woman to think of him as as threat, but he was right on the edge of something juicy, he could almost _taste_ it. "It might be important, ma'am," he encouraged.

Sigyn slowed her retreating pace in the direction of her kitchen, and turned to give him a very distressed look; as though revealing some hidden secret. "When we last saw her, she was leaving school and came by for some of her things. Will and Alice had always been close but… when he tried to talk to her, she just looked at him and said 'who are you?'.." Sigyn looked tired. "Tell me, Detective Masters… who pretends that they don't know their parents?"

Interesting food for thought as he was essentially chased out of the woman's home. At that moment not feeling quite up to torturing older women for scant answers, he let it happen.

Taskmaster yanked off his uncomfortable tie as he slid into the driver's seat of his stolen FBI car. The hub may have provided a decent forgery of a badge, but the car had been entirely up to him to procure. No worry - he only needed it for a few hours, and the broad dashboard made for a decent desk as he spread out his notes and photos.

Taskmaster tapped his pen against the notepad.

_Winter Soldier - Asset  
James B. Barnes  
Last known destination Foxhole Barns_

_Foxhole Barns- owned by Alice Sig.  
Missing, but not reported missing?  
Parents don't know she's missing - out of contact  
Mutant?  
Unrestricted travel capability : X-Assholes_

_Barnes -  
comfortable in Eastern Europe  
+30 languages_

_Alice Sig -_

He stared at the page, grinding his teeth together.

_Alice Sig - who the fuck knows_

At least Barnes' tactics would have followed a tactically predictable path - this horribly confusing creature that seemed to have squirreled him out of the public eye made for one hell of an unpredictable course. His usual tactics wouldn't work here - he'd tried to go back in her history to see what support systems she might fall back on, only to discover that she didn't have any.

_Who pretends that they don't know their parents_, the mother had asked.

_Angsty teenagers, and people who don't remember their parents_, he thought. A new idea forming, Taskmaster would have put money on the thought that Alice Sigynsdottir didn't remember any other friends and contacts from before Xavier's School of Freaks either.

"So…" he drawled, collecting his papers and shoving them back into a folder. "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. If you can't go home again, you can always go back a generation or two."

* * *

**July 5, 2015  
Reykjavik, Iceland**

Taskmaster was swiftly starting to hate Iceland. He'd arrived in early fall when the weather was still deceptively calm, but a roaring, dark, and raging winter had left him far more cross than when he'd arrived.

Once a week he'd break into the local police station and scroll through the limited list of police reports, keeping an eye out for anything that could possibly have resembled the resurfacing of one Winter Soldier. _C'mon, motherfucker,_ he thought, _make a mistake already._

Middle of the night in summer wasn't quite 'cover-of-darkness' he usually enjoyed, as the sun had stopped setting entirely. An entirely too trusting nation, however, used terrible locks on all their doors, so the police station remained easy enough to break into.

Taskmaster scrolled back up, having spotted something unusual and worth a second read. "Well hello there…" he rumbled, pleased.

_Incident # 09-02233_

_Persons__  
Role: Victim  
Mr. Einar Rafnkelsson_

_Offenders__  
Unknown intruder  
Description: unknown_

_Property__  
AMT Automag III 30 Carbine Pistol_

_Narrative__  
Victim describes the pistol has having last been verified in place at 3 May 2015, and noticed missing on 10 October 2015. Automag III 30 Carbine was displayed with twelve other firearms in locked display case in office of Rafnkelsson's home. Discovered the pistol to be missing when the owner went to retrieve it for a specialty show in London._

_Investigation of the scene notes that supportive display pins had been rearranged to simulate the original display orientation, but for twelve pistols instead of the original thirteen. Back door lock showed no signs of force, but did have scratches indicating tampering, possibly to disable the lock prior to end of day._

_Rafnkelsson appeared in several periodicals with photos posed in front of the display case, having recently won a tournament in London with a different pistol. It is believed that the offender targeted Rafnkelsson's property from one of these periodicals._

It had taken almost a year for the Soldier to make a mistake, and Taskmaster could have purred in satisfaction. "Specialty weapons are so hard to find these days, aren't they? So, did ya buy ammunition for that hand-cannon or did ya steal it?" The report didn't reference any stolen ammunition, and he could have giggled in delight.

Taskmaster set the computer to print the full report and flicked the tab over to the broader internet. Wouldn't you know it, there were only three stores that sell ammunition on the island. He scribbled down the phone numbers to call once the island woke up again, and took his stolen report. He even remembered to lock the door behind him again.

He hardly had the patience to wait for 10 a.m. and start making phone calls. He leaned back in his hotel's wobbly desk chair and put his feet up on the small excuse for a desk. The hotel would charge out the ass for the call, but he didn't care; the Hub was picking up the tab.

"Good morning, I was hoping you might carry .30 carbine rounds?"

The shop sounded irritated. _"What? No one around here carries those things."_

_One down._ Taskmaster hung up and immediately dialed the second shop.

It rang briefly. "Good morning, do you carry .30 carbine rounds?"

The answering party hummed thoughtfully. _"I could probably have them special-ordered, but there's not a lot of demand in the West. Try Krossdal's, though. It's a long drive but he carries big rounds like that sometimes."_

_One left_, he thought, dialing the last number. "Good morning, I'm calling around to find .30 carbines."

This shopkeep sounded more than enthused to chat. _"You're in luck! I had to order a case a couple of months ago and need to get rid of the rest - hard to believe Akureyri has a demand for them, but there's no telling sometimes."_

Taskmaster drew a big red circle around the remote northern town. "Akureyri, you say? Happens to be that I'm headed out there quite soon."

* * *

**April 1, 2016  
Akureyri, Iceland**

Waiting games were the absolute worst. Taskmaster sipped slowly at the thick coffee and glanced up every thirty seconds from his newspaper, trying to slouch back in his chair but finding his muscles complaining at the position.

If he could choose any location to spend a mild summer, Iceland was turning out to be almost pleasant. The air tasted like farts and the food salty as hell, but the weather was nice. Akureyri bustled along like it didn't know the world was coming to eat their little island alive and spit it out on social media in carefully composed bites.

But he was here for someone else. Three months of surveillance seemed a fair trade for hunting a world-renowned assassin, but he'd spent at least _double_ that looking for the steely-armed Soldier. The Hub seemed to be growing impatient at every check-in, but it couldn't be helped.

Taskmaster had wasted more than enough time in Reykjavik looking for the Soldier and his… whatever the girl might be. He didn't care much what happened to her; his mission was the Soldier. _Sanction and Extract._

He did a swift double-take as a head of blonde hair passed his cafe table. He'd almost missed it against the yellow coat she wore, but there was no mistaking the shape of her nose or the sharp angle of her jaw. _Alice Sigynsdottir._

Willpower alone kept him from throwing a wad of money down on the table and grabbing her right off the street. _Patience_, he thought. _Took this long, might as well do it right._

"Anya! So good to see you!" someone greeted and Alice Sigynsdottir waved enthusiastically. _Ah, and easy alias. _She followed the greeting voice into a small bookshop, still easily visible from his table at the cafe, and Taskmaster started a timer in his head.

Eleven minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, she emerged with a small paper bag tucked under her arm. _Bought a book. Well-known there. _He hated letting her walk down the street and out of view, but it was for the best. If he grabbed her on an open street the Soldier could hear about his presence and run. Similarly, if he followed her back to their base she might have the skills to pick up a tail, and then they'd _both_ be gone.

_Patience._

He finished his coffee and folded the newspaper. His heart surged, encouraging him to action, and he slowed further to control the urge. He paid his tab, collected his jacket.

Taskmaster strolled across the street, hands tucked in his pockets as he wandered into the store and didn't bother trying to look like he'd been there before. Everyone seemed to know everyone in the little town, so he'd be instantly recognized as an outsider no matter how he behaved.

_But,_ he thought with a sinister smile, _that's not a disadvantage here. _

A squat woman with hair dyed one shade too vivid of red sat behind the register, flipping through an app on her phone. He cleared his throat to get her attention. "Good afternoon, I'd like to send a book to my friend Anya as a surprise - do you deliver?"

She set the phone down and raised an eyebrow. "Anya up off the 832 after 828, or Anya on Merkigill?"

He gestured vaguely to the route Alice had taken out of town, hoping that he was pointing in the correct direction. "She's a bit of a recluse, long blonde hair? Sometimes walks around with a man with dark brown hair who doesn't talk much?"

The owner's eyes sparkled in recognition. "Oh! You mean Anya and Jakop - lovely people. I've sent her books before - I'll have it delivered no problem. What did you want to send?"

"Do you have _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_?"

"Probably back in Science Fiction - let me check for you." She sidled between narrow aisles to retrieve the slender novel, and slapped it on the register once retrieved. "Last one - you're in luck." The shopkeep pulled out a post-it and stuck it to the cover of the book. She pulled something up on the computer and scribbled an address on the note.

"Actually," he interrupted as she began to ring him up and grabbed the book before she could take off the post-it. "I think I'll head up there myself this afternoon and hand-deliver it. More special that way, you know?"

She shrugged it off, evidently not too upset at the lost delivery fee. "It's your ankles - it's a crooked sort of hike to get there. That'll be 1,861 krona."

An excited satisfaction burned in his throat as he walked swiftly back to his hotel, the promise of victory - _at last, at last_ \- tucked under his arm. Soon, he could put his face back on. Soon, he'd heft sword and shield and go on the hunt. _Soon_, he thought with delighted glee.

_Soon._

* * *

A/N: In the last story, the 'villain' was very loose, and could arguably be Cable, or the nebulous idea of time itself. For this story I wanted a real 'villain', and tons and tons of research led me to Taskmaster. He makes a wonderful dark reflection of Bucky, which I'll explore at length.

Wow, after a 7k chapter this one feels so short.

Also, I'm hinting at a bit more Alice backstory here for one final plug in Act 3. I can't stand dropping ALL THE BACKSTORY all at once, so I try only to bring it up when it's relevant. Here in particular we start to realize that Alice has yet to mention her parents at all, and you start to wonder why.

I tried hard not to get too carried away in this chapter, while also giving Taskmaster his due and setting up what we can expect from him.

I've spent a stupid amount of time checking my own writing to ensure continuity for plot points nobody's noticed. Grumble Grumble. Oh well; it's probably my own fault. Your one and only hint: If dialogue/plot is introduced that directly contradicts assumptions/facts established by previous dialogue/plot, there's a reason.

I love my reviewers! C0llapsing97, Momochan77, SomebodyWhoCares, rosafern, Sanguinary Tide, AquaBluey, GhostlySights, LoveFiction2019, xRaspberryx, TimeLordsRule, abstract0118, Sulia Serafine, Rreviewer,

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	20. A Small Measure of Peace

_**A sun rises.**_

* * *

_Soft hands touched at her face, caressing her skin. It plucked at the strings that poured from her chest and vanished off in the distance, occasionally vibrating with a chime like the ring of a phone. "You don't need them," her soft voice reminded._

_Alice closed her eyes and pressed her hands over her ears. Cicadas, she tried to remember the sound of cicadas. She tried to remember why she wanted to remember the sound of cicadas._

"_One," Alice whispered under her breath. A chorus of summer insects, making beautiful music. It reminded her of the smell of dry earth._

_Silver scissors flashed through the air, cutting threads. Snip. "You only need me." Her voice, sweet and caring, tried to push out the hum of cicadas in Alice's memory._

_Dry earth, she tried to focus on the smell of rich and dusty earth kicked up underfoot, and not the expensive perfume collecting around her in a cloud._

"_Two," Alice moaned, the experience of fighting physically painful. The smell of dry earth, of grounded places, leading her to… she couldn't remember._

_Silver scissors slashed at her hands and she grabbed at them, turning them to stab upwards at her puppeteer. Alice stabbed upwards and a man cried out. She could taste blood on her face, feel the ripple of flowers blooming in the fresh air._

_Bucky stared at her in horror, hands clutching at the freely bleeding wound that poured out red flower petals. "Alice?" he asked, blood and petals pouring from his mouth. "Why?"_

_Alice tried to fight against the threads that held her back, kept her from reaching for him and fixing what she broke. Scattered remnants of the threads swaddled her, knotted in the air, reaching, seeking -_

"You're okay," his voice whispered as a body rocked her gently. "I'm here. We're in Akureyri, in the little red cabin with heat that doesn't work all the time."

The light hurt her eyes as Alice struggled to separate dream from reality. "I'm sorry," she gasped. "I'm sorry."

Bucky's arms held her fast, grounding her, comforting her as his pulse beat on and on as though she hadn't just killed him in her dream. "Breathe, Alice."

Rolling sweat hid her tears; tears of relief as his voice whispered in her ear. _He's alive_, she thanked whatever gods might be listening. _He's alive._

* * *

_**A sun sets.**_

* * *

"I've killed people, too," she admitted, just standing in the bedroom doorway.

Alice needed him to know that she could relate to him, that she understood his suffering on more than one leve, but she couldn't bring herself to lay out her pain on the floor. She tried to follow him, but the fear and anger rolling off of him in waves could have caught flame.

There was no concealing the look of surprise on his face. She'd expected that to stop him, but not the look of surprise to turn into denial. "No you haven't."

She'd killed a soldier in the underbrush. She'd killed the overseer. She'd killed herself over and over again, trying to get off the never-ending wheel of time. "Yes. I have." She felt empty inside as she said it, like opening a door hoping to find a green field and finding a burnt and barren wasteland instead.

She shifted in her feet, readying herself to open the door wide and let him see the empty places inside - _here's where a garden used to be, _she'd say. _Here are the trees we cut down, and the salt we sowed._ It would be so easy, just like breaking bones and putting a bullet in her mouth, to take the lid off of the box and let her secrets out.

They weren't really secrets; she'd tell him if he asked. Alice just didn't want him to ask. She didn't want him to know she was just a shell of a person, reaching at every opportunity for meaning and connections to fill a void she'd helped to dig. She feared, more than anything else, that she was following a road to becoming a thing that she had hated and feared.

She shrieked in surprise as a hard knock on the door interrupted her thoughts and decisions.

"Anya?" A muffled voice called. "Are you home? You forgot your wallet last week!"

* * *

_**A fire burns.**_

* * *

"I've got the lady's drinks," a confident voice announced over her shoulder.

Alice sighed deeply, nearly ready to throw hands. "Listen, pal, I - oh!" Her hands flew up, nearly covering her face as she tried to swallow the harsh words she'd been readying.

_Bucky_. Not just any Bucky. This one had bright eyes and a confident smirk. "Evening, doll. I'd like to buy your drinks if it's not too much trouble; maybe introduce myself."

This one had cut his hair and trimmed his scruffy beard, and wore a tailored suit jacket over a shirt and jeans. This Bucky looked comfortable in his skin, though his eyes a little uncertain the longer she took to take it all in.

Given the luxury of staring, Alice tried repeatedly to grasp the difference he presented. Absolutely the appearance, but it was more than that. No amount of external change could match whatever had blossomed inside of him. Alice could feel it in the relaxed ease of his arm as she rested a hand at his elbow to follow him to a table. She could see it in the focus of his attention - just her, not doors and windows and the people milling around.

It wasn't like the return to Time that she'd dreamed of and hoped for. Though they stuck to old colloquialisms and terms, it wasn't a feeling of hiding in the past. _You've changed,_ she thought, _you're changing. _

She tried to stump him, to play that game by offering her impossible-to-pronounce middle name, but he rolled with it as smoothly as ever and called her _Hildy_.

"Oh Hildy," he drew her close and she lost her breath, "you've no idea how well I can knock this out."

The way he said that name, Alice wouldn't have been upset if he called her that for the rest of her life. But as he carried her home and dropped her on the bed and his face was just so close to hers she could taste his promise in the air, _Jamais,_ she knew it didn't matter what he called her at all.

_Sweetheart_

Each word as affectionate as the last and the one soon to come, they were only a shorthand for the way he looked at her with eyes that shone and an open hand reaching out to catch hers.

_Doll_

When he called for her the first time like it was a question he hoped to understand.

_Al_

He called for her now like he knew the answer; he'd found it at sea, or in the mountains, or possibly just sitting at home writing in his journal.

_Hildy_

She never wanted him to stop calling for her.

_Alice_

* * *

_**A fire dies.**_

* * *

Alice buried her head deeper into her pillow as a light shot in through newly-opened curtains. She rolled over and tried to pull the covers over her head, but quick hands stopped her.

"Hey, sleepyhead – coffee's ready." Warm kisses met her skin above the collar of her sleep shirt and sharp teeth nipped at the crook of her neck.

"No biting before coffee," Alice reprimanded, her voice still gruff from sleep. "There are rules in this house."

Bucky chuckled. "I've had my coffee; that means I get to bite all I want."

"That's _not_ the rule!" Alice cried in dismay.

"Are you sure?" Bucky drawled, hauling the squealing woman over to his side of the bed. "Because I remember _distinctly_ the rule failing to specify who needs the coffee before the biting."

"You're a lout, Barnes."

"You're a grump, doll." He rolled over, pressing Alice against the pillows as he caged her in with his arms. "What's the password?" he asked playfully.

"Coffee," Alice grumbled, rubbing sleepily at her face.

"That's yesterday's password – two tries left."

"You're mean."

"One try left," Bucky threatened as his head lowered closer.

"Please?" Alice squeaked, pressing back deeper into the pillows.

"All out of guesses," Bucky sighed consolingly. "Guess you know what that means?"

Alice nodded sadly, pulling up her shirt. Bucky blew a wet, loud raspberry on her stomach. She rubbed at her stomach with a corner of the sheets, making a disgusted face. "You're gross when you're awake."

"You're gross when you're asleep – is it normal to drool that much?"

Alice threw a pillow. "Go to work already!"

"Wow – so eager to throw me out; I'm hurt, sweetheart." Bucky dipped a knee into the bed, leaning over to kiss Alice passionately. She arched into it, wrapping her arm around his neck to draw closer.

"You're going to be late for the opening bell."

"The fish can wait."

"I would guess that they won't."

"What do you know? You're a plant person." He moved out of her embrace somewhat reluctantly. "What're you up to today, doll?"

Alice rolled over onto her stomach and tucked a pillow under her chin. "Think I might go into town - pick up some books and groceries. Knutur is coming by tomorrow to see about the banana pups; they're doing well enough to go to the main greenhouse now." She watched Bucky move through the cabin, collecting his coat and lacing his boots, trying to put a finger on the mood of the morning. "Are you going to be okay?" she asked.

He glanced up at her, surprise flashing in his hypnotically blue eyes. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She shrugged, but the feeling didn't pass. "Just had a weird feeling - forget it."

Bucky paused in donning his jacket. "I can stay, if-"

Alice cut him off. "No way! You haven't shut up about fish for the last month - you need to get out of the house. Plus we really need the money." She sent him on his way and the reluctance faded from his form as he took off down the lane; it was easy enough to see his excitement from the window.

Alice both liked and disliked her days off from the greenhouse; she had plenty of time to clean the cabin, and wash the linens, shop for the kitchen and pick up a book or two in town, but more and more often a lingering sense of dread had been trying to creep in during her free time.

_You've been in one place a long time_, fear whispered.

_You're not allowed to be this happy,_ doubt added. _He only loves you because you are all that's available. _

_This all has to end sometime,_ dread promised. _It always does. _

She tried to push them out of her mind by wandering through town, greeting friends and collecting the shopping. She opened the windows of the cabin to let in the fresh air as she put away the groceries, and pulled the hair from her face as she went to work in the greenhouse.

Her plants always soothed; little green fingers reaching up for her attention, or drooping in exhaustion and pleading for help. The banana pups were ready to graduate to larger pots and the process of carefully taking them out of their small pots took up so much of her attention that she almost didn't hear the light knock on the greenhouse door frame.

Alice laughed and didn't look up, still wiggling the plant in her hands into place. "Did you forget your key, Bucky? So excited to be back on the ship that you-"

The banana pup slipped out of her hands as she finally looked up, the terracotta crashing into pieces at her feet.

A stranger's form filled the frame, white cape rippling in a light breeze. A grisly skull mask grinned wickedly under a white hood, the fluttering breeze pulling at the hood and making shadows dance across the mask's textured surface.

"Hello there." He tugged at the front of his white hood in a form of mocking salute like a gentleman might tip his hat to a lady. However, the skull mask did nothing to comfort her. "Is the Winter Soldier at home?"

Alice stepped back but the stranger didn't advance. From what he could see she was cornered in the little greenhouse. He rested a hand against a huge sword sheathed at his hip; a silent threat. "There's no need to-_ Fuck!_" the trespasser yelled as she ducked under the greenhouse workbench and rolled through the secret panel into the cabin.

Once just a joke, the suggestion must have left a bad taste in Bucky's mouth because he had it installed in under a week. Alice had used it for getting hot coffee in and out of the greenhouse without needing to put on shoes. Now, it might save a life.

_Five seconds_, Alice counted them in her head as she searched for her phone, finding it on the kitchen island. She frantically opened the little burner and punched the number of Bucky's phone. It rang in her shaking hands, but a heavy metal object flashed through her field of vision before a blinding pain whipped through her arm and knocked the phone out of her hands, sending it skittering across the smooth floor.

No stranger to pain, the broken hand couldn't distract Alice from seeing a large circular shield bounce off the walls of their cabin and return, trajectory perfectly executed, to the intruder's grasp.

"Can't phone a friend for this one." He crashed a heavy boot down on the phone, crushing it to pieces. She could just make out his eyes through the mask as he turned his attention to her; blazing, predatory. "Where's the Winter Soldier?"

Alice stepped back, trying to keep a safe distance between them. "I don't know what that is."

"Yeah, you do." He drew his long sword from the scabbard at his waist and followed her retreat. "James Buchanan Barnes. The Winter Soldier. _Bucky_." He threatened her with the sword. "Don't be a hero, princess. Just tell me where he is and you can go."

"_Fuck off_," Alice spat. She ducked under the first swing of the sword and dashed over to retrieve the largest knife from the block in the kitchen. "Get the fuck out of my house."

The intruder seemed unphased. "Have it your way." He spun the sword lazily in one hand and Alice knew she was in trouble.

She couldn't evade the second swing, far faster than the first. Alice felt the sword bite into her throat, but could only process it as a horrible, wet, burning sensation. She lost feeling in her limbs as her body tried to comprehend the new sensation; the feeling of air coming in from the wrong part of her body, and then not coming in at all as her chest filled with wet heat.

Alice crumpled in the middle of the floor, hands pressed to her throat. Her chest moved rapidly, trying to pull in much-needed oxygen and finding only an ocean of blood waiting, shallow shores of her lungs rapidly diminishing as her breaths came faster and faster.

The intruder sighed like he'd accidentally broken a glass. "Aww, see what you made me do? I don't like doin' that."

With the little breath she had left, Alice began to laugh. It sounded hysterical and felt like it too.

It seemed to greatly disturb her attacker, who recoiled slightly. "The fuck is wrong with you?"

"I'm gonna… kill you…" she panted between feeble breaths. "If he… doesn't beat… me to it…" She laughed until she lost her last torso shuddered as it tried to cough, but only shot hot blood up and out of her open neck, with only a little making it out of her mouth. _I can't breathe_. Her head hit the cold floor and her vision narrowed.

The bright white skull mask filled her rapidly diminishing field of view. "You ain't killing anybody without a throat, honey. But you'll make a nice housewarming gift for my mission."

_Not honey,_ Alice thought as everything went dark, _it's Lieutenant._

* * *

_**A sun rises.**_

* * *

A/N: Wow, we're more than halfway through my outline already. When did that happen?

Slightly different tone to this chapter and a bit shorter where we go from little snippets of Alice's experience over the last year and a half to the conflict itself that's going to be the opposing force of the story. I wanted to cover Alice's fears and how they're very different from Bucky's, but lead them to make similar choices.

**Guest Questions:**

**When Taskmaster visited the farm, no signs of neglect, and no stench of a dead body?**

So it's strongly hinted at that Taskmaster was essentially called in when the first sniper failed to kill Bucky, and got there the day after Alice was shot and they ran. Sam and Steve got there another few days later, when the room definitely smelled like dead body/ decaying brain bits. It's also why they didn't hear Alice's phone ringing - Taskmaster took it with him. It's super subtle and definitely confusing; sorry, y'all. I tried to allude to it by including the dates of Taskmaster's POV.

I wanted to have everyone focus on Buck and Alice's recovery and development without the distraction of villain updates. It's far more powerful to just focus on their development and then introduce how all the little breadcrumbs they leave behind - especially Bucky's magically appearing second pistol (no one wondered where it came from?) - led Taskmaster to their cabin.

* * *

I love my reviewers! TimeLordsRule, Goldenfightergirl, TikiKiki, AquaBluey, rosafern, SunnySides, Momochan77, Sulia Serafine, and Sanguinary Tide!

**PLEASE REVIEW! **

If it's any incentive, every once in a while I send sneak peeks to a random consistent reviewer via DM. If you're only logged in as a guest you obvs can't get DMs.

(I seem to have pretty steeply lost reviewers - where'd y'all go? If at some point in the story you decide it's just not for you anymore, please leave me a comment or a DM saying where I lost you.)


	21. One Phone Call

**April 1, 2016**  
**One year, eight months in Akureyri, Iceland**

Bucky idly thumbed the power button on his cell phone as the fishing boat pulled into harbor. The burner phone chirped in Bucky's back pocket as the phone finally found reception again, signaling a missed call. That's odd, he thought as he flipped open what Alice called the 'hella outdated' device, she knows I don't keep it on when the boat's out.

A bolt of electricity shot through his spine as his eyes flashed across the screen.

_(1) Missed call from: Doll_

_(0) Voicemail_

Bucky stepped aside, out of the way of the crane coming to haul up the catch, as he hit return call. It didn't even ring. An unsympathetic and robotic voice informed him, 'The number you have dialed is not available, please-' He snapped the phone shut and jogged across the deck.

"Gunnar," he called to the ship's captain as he slid into the ship's curved doorway. "I need to go - it's an emergency."

The burly captain raised a skeptical brow, but didn't take his eyes off the controls. "Can't even wait until after offload? That's hours lost, you know."

"I know. It's an emergency," Bucky repeated.

Something in his voice made the captain turn and look, and then double-take. "Alright," he agreed after a long look at Bucky's rapidly panicking expression. "Take the truck." He tossed Bucky as set of keys from the cupholder on his right. The beat-up vehicle, painted with the same colors of the fishing vessel Kvasir's Song, could have been Gunnar's second wife after the ship.

Bucky had never once been trusted with those keys as he was, quoting the Captain's words exactly, a 'shifty motherfucker.' He'd never offered a word of kindness and Bucky had never asked for it. But something in Bucky's frightened face alarmed him to the point where, for the first time, he gave a helping hand.

Bucky didn't need to be told twice. He caught the keys, turned and used his left arm to vault over the side of the ship directly onto the docks instead of losing time backtracking to the ramp. The blue and white truck started smoothly, even though the exterior looked as though it hadn't been started in years. It kicked up gravel as Bucky roughly forced it into gear and peeled out of the stone parking lot on the edge of the docks.

The truck would cut down his travel time from nearly two hours down to ten minutes. Ten minutes if he followed the posted speed limits, that is. That left Bucky with the world's longest seven minutes to think too hard and too long about why on God's green Earth Alice wasn't picking up her phone.

For good measure, he tried again only to be reminded by some robotic female that Alice's phone number was not available, and to go fuck himself for trying. He threw it against the passenger door in his frustration and it vanished into the footwell.

Alice didn't go anywhere without her phone; it was the one habit he'd managed to drill into her through constant reminder. She'd forget her pistol or she'd forget a coat, but she always had her phone.

His panic was upsettingly dotted by visions of Alice in the morning, cooking breakfast without shoes on, or Alice in the evening, blinking slowly as she fought sleep but snuggled deeper into the crook of his arm. The other visions he tried to shake off looked like blood and made the cold steering wheel in his hands feel too familiar.

_It's nothing, it has to be nothing,_ Bucky tried to redirect his thoughts. _She dropped her phone in the bay on her way back from town. The phone glitched out and made a call on its own, then the battery died. _All of the reasons he could come up with were almost too reasonable, but also too normal to match up with his type of luck thus far.

Gunnar's truck took a traffic circle on two wheels as Bucky yanked the steering wheel violently and suddenly to the right rather than decelerate at all. The truck ripped up the long lane that led to the little red cabin, spitting gravel up like bullets against the truck's undercarriage. Bucky shoved it into park but didn't bother turning the engine off as he jumped out of the cab.

He stopped in his tracks as soon as he came around the side of the truck and got his first good look at his home.

Bucky and Alice both were creatures of habit, and depending upon the season Bucky could almost count on finding the cabin in a specific configuration when he came home from the shipyard. Alice liked to leave the windows open when the weather was nice, and sometimes even when it wasn't quite warm enough to leave windows open. The curtains would wave and flap in the breeze, like soft and beckoning hands, waving him up the lane.

Today, though, the cabin's windows were all shut, and a corner of the white curtains had gotten caught between the panels, leaving it fluttering in the wind. The front door was open, but all the lights were out, leaving the maw of his home looking more like a giant animal that wanted to eat him alive. Clear as the never-ending Icelandic summer days, he knew: _this is a trap._

_She's dead_, fear hissed, _she has to be._ If the enemy was at the gate, if they'd infiltrated their home in search of their lost asset, Alice would have stopped at nothing short of scorched earth to protect him. An open door, beckoning his return, meant that Alice was absolutely dead.

His rage built slowly, rather than the tidal wave of ferocity he'd grown accustomed to experiencing as the Soldier. It expanded his senses so he could see the deep and unfamiliar tracks leading up to the door, so he could see a faint spray of blood on the white curtains, so he could smell the burned-down fire in their hearth. Alice wasn't a fighter; she wouldn't have stood a chance.

_But_, hope whispered, _she always comes back. _She'd never been gone forever, and if he ran now he'd be leaving her to what would certainly be an unending cycle of torture and regeneration. She would want him to, probably; but he hoped, he hoped, that she knew he wouldn't. It was completely out of the question.

Bucky drew his pistol and flicked off the safety. It took barely a half-second to confirm the weapon was loaded from the weight alone, and another half to ensure a round was waiting in the chamber.

"How'd you find me?" he asked as he stepped into the cabin. He blinked to adjust to the change in lighting and raised his arm to block as a large metal shield was thrown his way. It ricocheted off his arm, then the wall, then back to a white-cloaked figure that stepped out of the shadows to catch it,

A deep voice drawled from behind a skull mask under a white hood, "Ya really shouldn't steal rare firearms – especially when they take unusual ammunition."

His white cape billowed in the cold wind rushing in through the open door, rippling over Alice's fallen form on the floor. The intruder twirled a sword lazily in one hand, flicking away some of Alice's blood from the blade. "Spunky one, she was. Wouldn't give you up, no matter what; that's real hard to find these days!"

Neck, cut open down to the bone. How long had she been down? How quickly could she regenerate? The intruder wouldn't be standing over her body if she knew she could regenerate. What if this was the one time she wouldn't?

Her eyes, still open, stared in blank horror at the ceiling. Her limbs splayed unnaturally at uncomfortable angles and one if her hands looked very broken. Blood had dried around her mouth and throat, and it felt like steel on his hands to look at her, smelled like sulfur and gunpowder. Rage, the monster that lived beneath his heart, struck out in fury and kicked his heart into overdrive. _Vengeance_, it demanded.

Momentarily distracted, Bucky had to leap to his right as the blade swung towards him and the metal glanced off his arm with a metallic screech.

"You must'a pissed HYDRA off pretty good, buddy," the intruder remarked as he pursued, forcing Bucky to retreat backwards through the cabin, taking blow after blow to his metal arm. "The Hub ain't some cheap back-alley killers."

Bucky emptied the magazine of the pistol in his hand, but his shots glanced off the hefty shield the intruder carried. The rage boiling in his stomach did him few favors on improving his aim. "You shouldn't have come," Bucky warned with a snarling threat.

"Why not? Who better to send than the best?" He threw the heavy shield and Bucky ducked, allowing the shield to ricochet harmlessly over his head and around the kitchen in a way that seemed eerily familiar.

The assailant swung a sword down with swift force. Bucky caught the blade against his arm yet again, but let it slide down his arm until it caught between two of the moving plates. He twisted his arm forcefully after the catch and the sword twisted out of his assailant's hands, spinning violently across the room to lodge itself into a thick support beam. "Get the fuck out of my house."

"That's funny!" The laugh coming through the mask sounded muffled. "She said the same thing!" He gestured over his shoulder to Alice's dead body.

Rage, a beast growing large in his body until it filled his skin to the brim, took over his brain and launched him across the room, determined to kill this man with his bare hands. This skull-faced, white-cloaked, sword-wielding psychopath in combat blues had broken into his house and killed his girl and had the audacity to joke about it.

Rage threw off his timing, and even though he was able to seize the shield and rip it from the assailant's grasp, Bucky took a swift kick to the gut, then a hit to the face as he doubled over from the first.

Bucky heaved his shoulder into the assailant's chest, throwing him back to pin him against the wall, one hand at his throat and the other holding down his dominant hand. "What's your mission?" he asked, and no part of his tone suggested answering was optional.

"Sanction and extract, Asset," he replied jovially, like the whole exercise was just a game. A sharp snap forward cracked the mask against Bucky's face, and he reflexively let go as he stumbled backwards.

A fuzzy light filled his view as his brain tried to correct from the sudden jarring impact. Bucky grabbed at a sharp object as it poked into his side, throwing it in the direction of the darkly chuckling voice. The fuzz cleared from his eyes right as his opponent caught the lamp he'd thrown and tossed it lazily aside.

The lamp landed in a pool of oil, spreading out from the reservoir by the back wall as it lazily leaked out from a stray bullet hole near the base. The metal scratched against itself, sparking, and caught the leading edge of the oil.

The intruder pulled his sword from the thick wood of the doorframe and twirled it again, testing the weight as if it might have changed before lunging to strike.

Bucky tried to catch a blow again between the plates of his arm, but the second time didn't go exactly as planned. "Can't fool me twice, Bucko; I don't work like that!" His opponent laughed as Bucky's failed attempt lost him a protective panel on his arm, and the exposed wires sparked dangerously, sending jolts of electricity humming through his body at unpredictable intervals.

Bucky broke away, rolling backwards and across the open space of the floor, narrowly missing a downward slash of the sword that tore up a section of the floor. The gap between them allowed Bucky to retrieve a hidden knife underneath couch cushions, and he twirled it between his fingers, contemplating throwing it but deciding to keep it in hand in case he lost the use of his arm.

The intruder tilted his head to one side, observing. "Wanna see a neat trick?" the intruder asked, sheathing his sword and pulling a short knife from a sheath at the small of his back. "C'mon - come at me."

Bucky shifted in his defensive stance, uncertain about whatever trap was being laid for him. A nervous tic, possibly a detrimental one, he twirled the knife again.

His opponent shifted in an identical fashion, watching intently. Not just a step-for-step match, but in the careful roll of a shoulder to put his stronger arm forward and an identical knife twirl. She same kick-off with the little finger and tuck of the thumb. Identical.

_He learns too fast,_ Bucky thought rapidly. _So, the more we fight, the more he learns._

But Bucky needed to stall for time. He needed to give Alice time to heal and wake up, to throw off the assailant and reassure him that this wasn't the one time she wouldn't heal. He risked a brief glance, but couldn't tell if she was breathing yet.

Before he could come up with a better strategy, the assailant charged again. Leading with a kick and a sharp jab of the knife, Bucky was forced back, blocking with his left. The exposed wires took a direct hit and he cried out as a violent jolt of electricity tried to sear a path straight through his brain.

The assailant grabbed him by the throat and threw him to the floor, digging a knee into his back as he pinned him down. "So, d'you get the message yet?" Bucky's opponent asked.

"What message?" Bucky ground out, his face nearly one with the floorboards as the assailant pushed it down harder.

Bucky's face slid across the floor as it was turned forcefully to look across the cabin. "Your lady-friend is just the first of - _what the fuck?!"_

He'd turned Bucky's head to look at Alice's corpse, but in doing so had noticed she wasn't there any more. Instead, her bloodied and still mostly-mangled body had moved across the room and stood atop the punctured oil tank. "Surprise, chucklefuck," Alice's voice rasped, her throat still stitching back together.

When the heat pump outside had finally failed in the middle of winter, the local handyman had installed an oil heat system instead, insisting on placing the large oil tank inside to protect it from the harsh weather. Bucky strongly suspected the eight-something year-old man simply wanted Alice's company during the installation, and working indoors purely helped him reach that goal.

Now, Alice stood over the tank he'd punctured with a ricochet bullet, oil spreading over the floor with a small flame flickering at the leading edge. Relatively harmless unless the flame worked its way back into the tank, which would take a while. However, Alice stood over the tank holding a large glass of water.

A bit of water from the glass sloshed over the rim and spat little steaming fireballs in the spreading lake of oil. "Hands off my fella," Alice threatened.

Whatever warning against throwing water on an oil fire he had been preparing, Alice's outdated threat threw the assailant for a loop. "What are you, eighty?" he asked.

She smirked. "Told you I'd kill you." The muscles in her arm flexed as she hurled ice-cold water towards the little flickering flame and in the same instant, the assailant instantly let go of Bucky and hurled himself through the nearest window, shattering glass in his desperate bid to escape.

He had good reason.

In a reaction near-instantaneous to the human eye, the water sank to the bottom of the fire and, due to the intense heat, vaporized into steam. That steam expanded by more than a thousand times its original size, pushing the fire upwards, oxygenating the oil and the fire at a far fiercer rate than before.

In the space of a reactionary turn to protect his skin, Alice's half of the cabin exploded into flames in a flash of light that would have blinded him had he not.

"_Alice_!" he roared desperately. Bucky didn't try to follow his attacker, but blinked furiously against the heat and billowing smoke as he searched for Alice.

"_Here_," came a muffled cry. A hand appeared from behind the sofa that had just started to catch fire. Bucky seized the offered hand and pulled, hard, as the oil tank started to groan and whistle with heat. The front door roared with open flames, but the escape hatch leading to the greenhouse remained a viable exit.

Once only a joke, Bucky silently thanked God for Alice's odd impulses as they ducked through the panel to safety. He caught Alice as she fell into a roll, and pushed her to standing before following in a quick exit.

Only a few steps clear of the cabin, the oil tank finally surrendered to fire and the building pressure within. The explosion cracked like a bomb through the air and knocked both of them off their feet. Bucky tried to cover as much of Alice as he could with his body to protect her.

Bucky felt the pressure change in his chest as the wave cut through the house, blowing out the windows and setting off every car alarm within earshot. Keeping his arms wrapped around Alice's head, he lifted his head gingerly to check if the coast was clear before allowing her to sit up.

She moved unsteadily, reaching out a hand for balance. Bucky grabbed it to help her stand as words of reassurance died in his mouth.

"I'm okay," Alice reassured instantly at seeing his expression. Burnt, battered, and bloodied, she looked far from okay. Half of the right side of her face glittered with blisters and scorched skin, flaring and falling away as her mutation worked to repair the damage. Her sweater hung smoking off the right shoulder, revealing more blisters crawling down her neck and down her arm. The tank fireball she'd made, no doubt.

He seized her in a fierce embrace, cradling her head against his shoulder and pressing his cheek to the top of her head. Even through the smell of singed hair and burnt fabric, she still smelled faintly like herself.

_One_.

She returned the tight embrace, scrunching the back of his sweater tightly in her hands. The weight of her, pressed as tight as she could manage, grounded his fervently insistent heart. Blessed are you, Lord God… he could breathe again.

_Two_.

"So," Alice coughed, the motion loosening the grip she had around his waist, "how was work?"

The off-color comment threw him back into motion. He drew back, holding her shoulders and staring at her mostly-healed face with dismay.

"Have you lost your mind!?" He took her left - unburnt - hand in his and pulled her towards the truck. The windows had all blown out but it still seemed to be running, the engine thrumming away just as he'd left it.

"You could've blown up the whole house instantly - killed all three of us!"

"Nah," she coughed, clearing something from her chest, "I was pretty sure it would just blow me up, and he'd run. And I was - ow!"

Bucky let go of her hand as she cried out, the electricity arcing through his arm zapping her hand. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Alice gave him a heartbreakingly sympathetic look. "I'm alright - are you? That looks painful."

Bucky's arm twitched at the mention, but he forced it to cooperate long enough to open the truck door for Alice and close it behind her. She watched him with concern as he moved around the truck to the driver's side, trying to both watch her and look out for the vanished assailant.

The truck's engine groaned as he shifted, but that was likely nothing new. He could feel Alice's eyes, searching his face for answers she didn't need to ask the questions to obtain. He usually ignores it and hoped she focused on something else, but at that moment he reveled in it; evidence that she lived again.

She turned her attention to the road, rapidly eaten up under the trucks tires, and pushed her palms into her eyes, sighing deeply. "Well, Plan A didn't go so great, and Plan B is over now… is it time for Plan C?"

"What's Plan C?" Bucky asked, merging onto the highway.

"Plan C is actually Plan A, just with a lot more guilt." Alice sighed harder. "Do you have your burner? The dude broke mine."

"Footwell… somewhere." Alice went hunting at his direction, and sat up victoriously holding the lost phone. She punched in a number from memory, but hesitated for a second before completing the dial. "What's wrong?" Bucky asked, glancing away only briefly from the winding road.

"It's silly, but…" Alice tapped her thumbnail against the screen anxiously. "What if they won't help us? What if they're angry with me?" she admitted the fear.

"Why would they be?"

"I found you but I didn't tell them - what if they think I lied? What if they think I abandoned them? What if-"

Bucky snorted. "Steve might have an excess of stupid sometimes, but he's not that dense."

"I hope you're right." Alice let her head tip back to rest against the seat. "Well, here goes nothing."

* * *

**April 1, 2016  
Upstate New York**

Mid-afternoon in upstate New York barely pierced the thick windows of the Avengers compound, but the music within nearly rattled the thick glass windows. Sam Wilson bobbed his head and foot to the heavy bass of a song as he worked on disassembling his exo-pack. It had been acting up a little, not taking corners quite so well, and he wasn't inclined to keep smacking into walls at 110 mph.

Well engrossed in the business of mechanics, the sudden lurch from bluetooth-connected music to the sirens of his phone's ringtones also projected at the same volume was beyond distracting. Sam jumped and swore sharply as his screwdriver slipped and skittered across the steel of the exo-pack.

He shook his hand to clear the unpleasant buzzing sensation as he yelled skyward, unnecessarily, at Stark's AI. "FRIDAY, turn it down!"

_"Sure; should I answer the phone, too?_" The AI asked over the swiftly lowered volume.

"Who's calling?" he asked even as he reached for his phone.

**Unknown caller,** his phone read.

_"It's originating in Reykjavik,"_ FRIDAY informed him.

Sam ignored the call. "Scammers are really branching out," he mused, tossing the phone back onto the counter. He'd barely had the time to think about where he'd lost the screwdriver when the phone rang again.

"_Reykjavik again,"_ FRIDAY commented.

"You mind your own business," Sam snapped. He ignored the call again, but didn't set the phone down. He stared at the screen, glared at it, almost.

His phone chirped with a text message.

**Pick up the phone.**

"Have you ever heard of a scammer calling and texting?" Sam idly asked the AI. Before it could answer, his phone rang for a third time. "Nevermind," he muttered. He tapped the green icon and held the phone to his ear. "Listen, buddy; please scam somebody else I am not in the-"

_"About damn time, Sam; It's Alice."_

He stopped dead in his tracks. "Al?" The voice sounded right, but it had been so long he almost couldn't be certain.

A tinny laugh filtered through a bad connection. "_Yeah, it's me. I don't have long; I need your help."_

Sam dropped what he was doing and turned on a dime, leaving the workshop without a second thought. "Where are you?" he barked. "Are you okay?"

A brief pause, a hesitation he didn't like at all, then - "_Iceland_." He noticed she didn't answer the second question.

Sam turned a corner and his walking stride turned into a light jog. "Is the – is Barnes with you?" There was a longer pause, and Sam feared for a moment that the connection might have dropped out. "Alice?" He didn't want to risk taking the phone away from his ear for even a second to check the screen, or even to ask FRIDAY.

The phone crackled, like someone had covered the phone's microphones. _"Still here – Bucky is with me, yeah. Listen, I don't know if I've got any favors left but... we need to get out of Iceland. And I mean right now."_

He took off across the compound. "I've got you – what's the nearest airport?"

"_Keflavik is the only international airport – it's a five hour drive from us."_ He could hear the faint murmur of a deeper voice, but couldn't make out the exact words. "_Make that four hours if the weather holds off."_

"Can you stay on the phone, Al?" Sam grabbed at a corner as he tried to take it at a dead run, missed it, and slammed his shoulder into the opposite wall. He hissed in pain but didn't slow down. .

Alice sighed defeatedly through the line and his stomach churned. "_I don't think that's a good idea."_

Sam nearly tripped over his own feet as he jogged up a set of stairs. "Okay – call me when you're thirty out from Keflavik. I'll have something waiting for you."

"_Sam_," Alice breathed a deep sigh, "_thank you."_

"You stay safe," he ordered. "Or I'm gonna be real disappointed in your effort, Lieutenant."

She chuckled, and it sounded so damn familiar it hurt. "_We will."_

She hung up just as Sam launched himself through the wide doorway into the compound kitchen.

Steve Rogers looked up from his newspaper, startled at the sudden entry. Sam had no end of jokes about the world's oldest soldier reading the newspaper every afternoon, but Sam always knew where to find him at three in the afternoon. "Everything okay, Sam?"

Sam took a deep gulp of air to catch his breath. "You'll never guess who just called me from _Iceland."_

**End of Act II: Remembrance**

* * *

A/N: Don't try to use water to put out grease/oil fires. Youtube that shit - it's spectacular.

To beat y'all to a question- caller ID locations are based on the origin location of the phone number - essentially where you bought it. There are only two mobile phone stores on the island of Iceland, and they're both in Reykjavik.

Act 3 got re-structured, and I'm happier I think with the overall themes I'm going for. The outline alone is 5 pages long, and there's going to be a lot of subtext. I want it to be one of those things where you can go back and reread and notice something different every time.

And it is officially official, following an intestinal biopsy I truly do have Celiac Disease. Yay for manufacturing defects! Much love to everyone who's checked in on me and my health between chapters. Y'all the real MVP.

this is posted tonight from my phone again so be kind regarding typos and format errors.

I love my reviewers! Momochan77, RainbowLabs, LisaPark, WhispersOfWings, Lucy, xRaspberryx, TrilbyBard, TikiKiki, rosafern, SunnySides, SomebodyWhoCares, TImeLordsRule, LucyJacob, Mia, ILOSTMYGrace, GhostlySights, readingtilldawn, abstract0118, LoveFiction2019, Sanguinary Tide, AquaBluey, Nightbloodwolf, CrzyAsians, LeandraWhite, nekokairi, and bananraberrybat!

**PLEASE REVIEW**


	22. Here Comes a Thought

**Act III: Revelation**

_Top corner, bottom corner, walk around the bed. Bottom corner, top corner, smooth fabric. _Sam Wilson's motions felt mechanical, going through the simple motions of making a bed just to keep his footing on the ground. He snapped the cover sheet to chase out the corners and let it settle on the wide spare bed. Set back a little too far from the main through-way, the room had been dubbed the "least favorite guest room". It was about as far as you could get from the Avengers' main spaces without being in trainee bunk quarters.

"_Plane's about to touch down," _FRIDAY interrupted as Sam folded tight corners into the top sheet's foot. "_Ten minutes."_

"Thanks," he unnecessarily replied to the computer's feminine voice. A puffy duvet was the last element to add to the huge King bed. Well, it would have been huge for one person. Sam would have preferred Alice stay on the opposite end of the compound but Captain America himself had insisted it wouldn't be necessary to separate them like that.

"_If it didn't work in 1943, it probably won't work now,"_ he'd laughed.

"_It's not exactly 1943 anymore_," he'd tried to argue. Steve hadn't heard him over whatever memory he'd gotten stuck in once he started talking about the Good Old Days.

Sam was bracing himself.

A year and a half.

What had happened to his friend in all that time? Why had she waited so long to reach out - was it a final and desperate bid for freedom? Or was it a final goodbye wrapped around the promise of reunion?

A year and a half and a little more.

Would she still be the Alice that he remembered? Was the Alice that he remembered even the _real_ Alice? Had the real Alice only lived in 1943 and drowned in a sinking ship? Was he some kind of an existential asshole for even thinking about all of this?

One year, eight months.

What did it say about him that he'd never really given up on the search for his friend, keeping an ear to the ground even after Steve told him to let it go? What did it say about him that he hadn't even considered searching Alice's ancestral homeland, a place she'd never tried to hide?

She'd never tried to hide a lot of things. She'd never hidden that she suffered crippling nightmares and an agonizing regret. Alice had never faked a smile on a rough day or held back a laugh on a good one. Weird, fluctuating, inconsistent Alice had probably always been her true face. One day drowning under the stool of a bar and the next just grabbing at the reigns of a horse ready to kick her in the face.

"_Two minutes,"_ FRIDAY interrupted again, reminding him that he'd been staring at the bed for eight minutes.

Sam threw pillows on the bed in a haphazard fashion. "Yeah, yeah; I heard you."

"_Didn't seem like it."_

"Is there a way to turn you off?" He glared at the ceiling.

"_Not that I'll tell you."_

"Great."

He made his way out to the landing pad at double-time, making it out the wide glass doors just as the roar of pulse-engines broke over the cheerful evening crickets.

Steve stood at something resembling attention, though it appeared to be from nerves. His gaze followed the AI-piloted jet as it spun into position for a calculated landing like he could somehow keep it from leaving through will alone if it suddenly changed course.

Sam tucked his hands in his pockets, for lack of anything better to do with his anxious energy. "Nervous?" he asked.

Steve seemed to notice him and gave a wry grin. "Maybe a little."

"Should I have dressed up?" Sam gestured to Steve's shield, wondering if he should have grabbed his Wings.

Steve glanced down and shifted his grip in the leather straps. "I'm sure it's not necessary."

Sam's eyebrows rose. "Yeah, you sound real sure."

The jet's engines cut off as it switched to cool-down. The ramp lowered, opening up the belly of the machine. Sam and Steve both stared at the empty opening, waiting.

"FRIDAY, are they on board?" Steve asked the computer through his little comms-piece.

"_Yes, Captain," _the program confirmed. "_They seem to be arguing."_

"Who's winning?" Sam asked.

A light patter of footsteps rang through the metal as someone started their way down the ramp. "Steve!" Alice cried out in joy as she spotted him, her measured walk turning into an enthused run.

Steve opened his arms to embrace her as she launched herself at him, though he had to drop the shield as Alice didn't seem to notice it or make adjustments for it in her trajectory towards a hug.

Her feet dangled in the air as he held her tightly, but she didn't seem to mind the height or the length of the hug. "Hey, kid." Steve set her down carefully, and just then seemed to notice that the color of her sweater matched the crusty bloodstains on her neck. "Jesus Christ, Alice-"

"It's fine, it's fine," she defended, backing away a step and brushing flakes of dried blood of her neck. "No permanent damage."

"You really shouldn't run out in the open," A rumbling voice added, following Alice's path down the jet at a more measured pace.

"Bucky," Steve said the name but seemed unable to finish the train of thought.

Sam didn't remember the soldier saying anything during their last encounter, but the soft and gentle tone didn't match the picture he'd held in his head of Alice's abductor for the last year and a half.

"What happened?" Sam's gaze flickered accusingly towards Bucky who bristled instantly. The straightening of the soldier's posture _definitely_ matched Sam's memory now.

Alice stepped into the conversation, sidling between the two in a casual separation of powers. "We were attacked at home, and-"

In a whisper of fabric so nearly indistinct it could only come from one entity on the compound, a cultured and accented voice interrupted, "Captain, I-" Alice shrieked with a terrified fear as the wall next to her sprouted a red-skinned person with absolutely no warning, cutting off whatever question Vision had been intending to ask.

With no hesitation, Bucky drew a pistol and fired twice at the threat to Alice while pulling her behind him. The bullet tore through Vision's semi-corporeal form without doing any apparent damage.

"_Bucky!_" Steve snapped. "He's one of ours!"

Sam grabbed for Alice's arm, to pull her away from the clearly still homicidal soldier, but she wriggled out of his grip and pressed herself against Bucky's back, wrapping her arms around his middle. She whispered something into his skin, so low that Sam couldn't make it out, and the Soldier lowered his gun slightly.

Vision appeared perplexed at best. He solidified, and started to approach the two with his hands held in is best 'my bad' position. "My apologies, I thought-" he stopped as Bucky raised the pistol again.

"I wouldn't," Alice warned, "It takes him a minute. You should probably go."

"Later, Vision," Steve confirmed.

The robot wisely made his exit the same way he'd entered, clearly not understanding that was the root of the problem.

Bucky reached an arm around to his lower back and Alice swatted his hand. "_No._" He grabbed at Alice's hand instead, metal fingers gliding over her skin to intertwine with hers. It would have been sweet if Sam wasn't worried the Russian Soldier might try to rip his friend's arm off.

But it seemed to do the trick. Whatever soothing comfort holding Alice's hand provided, it was enough for the twitchy soldier to put his pistol away, though he didn't try to hide that he still had it. He turned sharp and angry eyes on Sam. "You got somewhere for her to rest?"

"Oh, I don't-" Alice tried to protest.

Sam returned the harsh look, not ready to back down from whatever challenge this was becoming. "We've got something ready."

Bucky didn't even look at Alice. "She needs sleep after healing from… after healing. And something to eat. And a shower."

"Can we stop talking about Alice like she's not standing right here?" Sam objected.

"It's fine," Alice waved it off with a tired smile. "I'm used to it."

She didn't seem to appreciate the exasperated look Sam gave her. "You're used to being luggage? That's comforting."

"Alright," Steve stepped into the growing hostility, "that's enough. Alice, you need to wash up before someone gets concerned. Buck, you and I should talk about why you're here."

"Yes, Captain," Alice agreed begrudgingly.

"Oh, him you listen to," Sam sighed. "I really shouldn't be surprised, but here we are."

"I'll be around, don't you worry," Alice gave Bucky's hand a final squeeze and a smile of encouragement before she moved enough out of his reach for Sam to be confident she was out of harm's way. For the moment.

Bucky's gaze swept over Sam; assessing, judging. _Keep looking, asshole; I've got nothing to hide. _Bucky turned his head to speak to Alice but kept his eye on Sam. "_Ne fais rien de dangereux." _

Sam did not like the warning note in the soldier's tone.

"_Tel que?"_ Alice wobbled her hand in a typically dismissive sort of way. "I'll be fine. Sam and I will just be catching up until you get back. Right, Sam?" She wrapped her arms around Sam's right like she was his middle school dance partner.

"Right," he agreed instantly. "So let's go catch up." He looked to her, to see if this was the cry for help he'd been expecting; for an exit, for rescue, but she was beaming at the glowering soldier like he'd offered to take her to Paris for the weekend.

Barnes opened his mouth to comment, but Alice led the charge towards the main compound, punching the air with a victorious "Lead on!"

Her enthusiasm dulled slightly as they entered the sleekly decorated building, firmly keeping her gaze set forward as they worked around crowds of new recruits also arriving in droves. Chatter drifted through the air about rooming arrangements, the huge bays of bunk beds, and scheduled runs and exams. Sam had been more than prepared for the interested glances from the young kids - if eighteen and twenty still constituted 'kids' - but Alice had come without warning, and her presence with the new Avenger certainly gathered attention.

Sam cleared his throat, pointing down a wide hall to direct Alice's attention to the more private Avengers spaces. "So your room is-"

Alice didn't follow his gaze, interrupting. "I don't want to go to the room yet, I need something to drink."

Sam suffered briefly from subject whiplash until he remembered who he was talking to. "But you just said- and your shirt - and what about-"

"The blood stains are already _well_ set in by now, Sam. I need cocoa. I think better when I have cocoa." Alice waved it all off, her head whipping around as she surveyed the branching series of hallways that all led in wildly different directions. "You can either take me to a good kitchen or I'll get lost for a few hours finding it."

"Or you could be a normal person that doesn't like wearing blood, but I guess that's too much to ask from your first day back?" There was no fighting Alice, he should have remembered that.

Alice nodded. "That is indeed too much to ask. Chocolate. Stat."

Sam could have laughed if he'd been a little more adjusted to Alice's sudden reappearance in his life. "To keep you out of the mess hall, I'll take you to our kitchen. Try not to chew on the walls."

Alice let him lead her away from the crowds and towards the private areas reserved for the founding heroes. Once she seemed to no longer be avoiding stares her head swiveled to look up and around, taking in the large building's impressive architecture.

"Stark has weird taste," Sam offered, holding a door open for Alice.

"Yeah, I'm gathering that. He's not big on opaque walls in common areas, is he?"A grin flickered across her face. "Ah! A kitchen at last!"

Alice rushed over to the large space and started opening and closing cabinets in her hunt for ingredients - Sam recognized her odd pattern of checking cabinets in an order most people would consider random. "Where do you hide the cocoa powder around here?"

Sam opened a cabinet to the far left and pulled out a jar of cocoa powder, but held it slightly out of her reach. "At least two different machines in this kitchen make hot chocolate, Al."

Alice glowered at Sam until he brought the jar down to her level. "Are you really going to tell me that you didn't miss my homemade cocoa?" She somehow missed the look of indignation that her remark caused.

"Did I miss - " Sam shook his head. "This is that easy for you, eh?" Sam laughed frustratedly. "Just jumping right back in like nothing happened?"

Already throwing ingredients into a pot without bothering to measure - she never had before, why start now - something like regret filled her eyes. "Sam," Alice sighed sadly, "I'm sorry I didn't call sooner, but-"

"Nope," Sam cut her off with a raised hand. "Stop and imagine, for a minute, what it was like. I got a call from my friend late at night, telling me to call back because it was important. I called back in the morning when I checked messages, but nobody picked up. Now, I know my friend's serious voice because I know her pretty well, and I kept calling, and still, nobody picked up. I want you to imagine, for a minute, what I felt as I dropped everything and went to check on my friend."

"But-" Alice tried, but Sam gave her a pointed look and she clammed up.

"I want you to imagine what it was like when I walked up to that level and found a huge pool of blood with bits of what looked like _brain_ in it, and I found a bullet lodged in the far wall. Now," he changed tone sharply, "I want you to imagine the hell I went through making sure her barn was left just as she ran it. But then, _but then_, I get a phone call from a blocked number about a year after I think I might just have to give up on seeing my friend again!" He hadn't realized he was yelling, so he softened his voice just a little. "Can you imagine?"

"Sam," Alice breathed, emotion filling her eyes. "I just- I didn't…"

It broke whatever angry determination he'd been running on. "Get over here and hug me, you monster." Steve might have gotten a flying attack hug, but Sam would have argued (not that it was a contest, but this might be the only one he'd win against the Captain) that the hug he got was far more sincere.

In two minutes, it already felt like Alice had never left. Violent energy - like an uplifting wind at the edge of a cliff or the warning rumble of distant thunder - filled the air around her and left the room in her wake sparkling with a new and vibrant light. She lit curiosity and inspired fierce emotions, even if those emotions turned sour or angry.

He'd missed his friend. He'd missed the wild abandon with which she lived her life, in both grief and joy. It made sense once he learned who and what she was. It made sense, once he understood the grief that lingered without speaking like he understood his own demons. He had a lot of experience talking about pain and demons and grief, but those issues of the time-traveling sort somehow kept popping up in his life.

Alice pulled back from the hug first, wiping some moisture from her face with the few parts of her sleeves that weren't blood-stained. "I should stir the cocoa before it scalds," she murmured.

Sam leaned against the wide island, crossing his arms. "Are you okay? And don't just blow this off like I know you want to - you got kidnapped by an assassin and I personally would _not_ be okay after that."

Alice laughed, some of the sparkle returning to her eyes. "He didn't _kidnap_ me, Sam. If anything I kidnapped _him_."

Sam made a disbelieving face. "Could you be serious for maybe five minutes?"

She returned his expression with a mischievous raise of the eyebrow and a quirk of the lips. "I am being serious."

_Holy shit; she is serious_.

It made sense. It made more sense than anything else he'd been worried about possibility-wise in the last year and a half. Steve had insisted - over and over again - that Barnes wouldn't hurt Alice; _couldn't_ hurt Alice. It made sense that loyalty and intensity at that level probably went both ways.

"So you're telling me you got shot through the head and your first thought was to pack up and take him on an adventure?" It left his mouth and he instantly thought, _of course__ she would. _If he'd had the chance to save Riley he would have taken it instantly. This was a person that Alice had loved with all her heart.

"It was the second thought, but yes." Alice opened drawers randomly until she found a ladle and started doling out cocoa into two large mugs. "My first thought was '_gross, brains'._"

Sam accepted the brimming mug and took an appreciative sniff. "I really shouldn't be surprised - I think sometimes you gotta forget that you're not actually a superhero."

Alice thought about it, tapping her finger against the mug. "That's true."

Sam paused mid-sip as he realized how his words might have sounded. "I didn't mean for that to sound as mean as it did."

She waved off his worry. "Oh, honey I know that."

Sam continued anyway. "I just meant that these people break things - big, expensive things - when they fight. Stark buys things _just_ to break people against them - it's crazy." He needed to get it across her somehow that her self-sacrificing nature wouldn't do her any favors - that it, in fact, might get her really, really hurt. Gathering his thoughts, composing the best argument to throw into the wind, it all ended up getting thrown out the window as Alice's attention caught something over his shoulder.

"Alice?" a rough voice called for her. Barnes had somehow snuck into the large room without making a sound. _Again, I shouldn't be surprised, _Sam thought.

She set the mug down on the counter, barely touched, and rushed around the island to meet him halfway. "Hey, Buck - you and Steve done already?"

"It's late." Barnes looked at Sam with an intensity that rivaled the look he'd given immediately off the jet. "Tomorrow."

"That's my cue, Sam." She shot him a comfortable smile even as she reached gently towards danger, and danger reached back, intertwining two metal fingers gently into hers. "Enjoy the cocoa."

Sam raised his mug. "Just like I remember it."

Barnes and Alice shared quiet words as they left the kitchen, headed down a long hall towards the least favorite guest room.

_I thought I told you to get cleaned up._

_To be fair, you didn't actually directly tell me to do anything._

_You're full of shit._

_I would have been full of cocoa if you'd taken a few more minutes to relax with Steve._

They looked comfortable together. Alice beamed at Barnes as she gave him a rough time of it, but Barnes also softened as he returned her jabs. For someone who, until that moment, had only looked two seconds away from murder, he looked remarkably… soft. Comfortable. Happy.

Sometimes it didn't feel like people could really move past grief; to move on. Some people could do it but it so often just felt like a charade. Taking up a call to action and flying around with super-people like he could pretend to keep up sometimes seemed like a ridiculous lie. Given Alice's experience, could he really blame her for taking her shot at happiness?

Whatever monster he believed might still be living in Barnes' head, he looked at Alice like she was the rising morning sun. Whatever danger Sam believed the soldier presented, Alice still looked at him like he had hung the stars in the night sky.

Soft.

Comfortable.

Happy.

_Well damn, Alice. You really did it_.

He would have raised a glass in her honor, but all he had was a mug of cocoa he'd barely had a chance to taste. With a hesitant sip at the steaming hot liquid, he got a taste of the happiness overflowing from Alice's heart. The cocoa tasted sweet. Not too sweet.

After all this time, Alice still remembered just the way he liked it.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for the long radio silence! I spent a lot of time this last month being sick, then got Poison Ivy on top of it. Steroids + Benadryl = hard to think straight.

This chapter took a bit of an odd path for me; I wanted to explore Sam's feelings about Alice, and about Alice's relationships with other people as seen through Sam's eyes. Honestly, I'm sad that this story will be finished before the Falcon and Winter Soldier show comes out. THAT IS NOT TO SAY IT'S ABOUT TO END SOON. Y'all don't freak out, now.

I'm actually very grateful I took this time to pause and reflect on what I wanted out of Act 3. I re-watched Avengers 1 and 2, and for a lot of interesting insight into the characters again (while trying real hard not to cry because I miss my bbs). I think Act 3 is going to be funny, emotional, and maybe make you as readers think hard about what it means to be a part of a family. I re-wrote the outline for Act 3 _twice_.

I love my reviewers! AquaBluey, Sanguinary Tide, Momochan77, rosafern, TikiKiki, LisaPark, TImeLordsTule, TrilbyBard, IvoryDarkWolf, LoveFiction2019, Rachel, Guest, Lucy Jacob, SomebodyWhoCares, SunnySides, Jedi-Olympian, Peruna, tuckerjnp1, readingtilldawn, Sulia Serafine, nekokairi, Guest, Mrs Hudson Took My Skull, Vintagebaker, TheCauldron, Wolf Princess of the moon, MiaHammBailey, thegirlthatneverwrites, Bloody-Aliice, Bimbumel2 and 0peneyeZ!


	23. The Third Topic

The sunrise in upstate New York could be spectacular in the early summer's rising mists, and Steve enjoyed the brief peace it afforded him. He stood outside the guarded walls of the compound's massive building, watching as the eastern sky lightened and began to cast hazy spears of light into the shadows above.

He heard a magnetic latch disengage but didn't turn away from his pending sunrise. The approaching footsteps didn't sound like Vision's measured pace or Natasha's dancer's stride, or even Wanda's hesitant skip. He glanced back, and as he did he realized he had recognized it after all; Alice's balanced walk, slightly disguised as she rolled each step to keep level two mugs brimming with hot coffee.

A damp braid was seeping a little moisture into a thick sweater whose sleeves she'd had to push up past her elbows - borrowed from Wanda or Nat, probably - though he frowned at her walking around outside barefoot.

"Good morning," Alice greeted with a tired smile, holding out one of the two mugs for him to take. "Spotted you out here and thought you could use some."

"Thank you," Steve gratefully accepted. The coffee didn't do anything for his system but the ritual of drinking coffee with a friend was appreciated. He imagined coffee didn't do much for Alice, either. "Did you sleep okay?"

She shrugged. "Not so much; new places and all that." She took a deep breath, savoring the morning air. "It's nice up here."

"Is Bucky…?" Steve wondered if he had vanished in the night - run off to vanish into the world at large. But he wouldn't just leave, right? Not again, and hopefully not so soon?

Alice answered swiftly, clearly sensing his concern. "He's still waking up. Wanted a couple of minutes to gather his thoughts. But," she glanced over her shoulder to make sure they were actually alone. "I wanted to ask you if you could call in any favors for his arm? It got damaged in the fight and it's shorting out now and then."

"Of course."

"Thanks, hon."

They stood in silence, faint sips of coffee the only attempt to disturb the chorus of night-birds and early-birds changing shift, seeking out the early worms and drinking the morning dew.

"How are you?" Alice asked. The fingers she'd wrapped around her mug twitched as she fidgeted with the handle. She chewed on the side of her lip and gave him a look of grave concern. "I never asked before. I feel bad about that."

Steve wasn't the one recovering from attempted murder. "I'm great. I'm happy to see you both again."

Alice nodded, still chewing on her lip. She stepped closer and put a hand on his arm like she was attempting to console him. Her face grew soft and her tone weary. "Yeah, but... how are you?"

The sun broke over the horizon. It was beautiful. It was beautiful any morning Steve woke up before dawn with the sound of gunfire and screaming people ringing through his dreams, clawing at his sheets and trying to climb out of his skin because he felt too large, too heavy, with limbs more cumbersome than he'd been born to manage.

Steve sipped at the coffee Alice had brought him, black as the night was dark; as she'd always made it during the War. "You don't need to worry about me anymore, Nurse Shaw." He could feel her eyes searching his face, though he kept his attention firmly on the sunrise.

He heard her release a defeated sigh. "You'll always be one of my boys, Steve; I'll always worry. You didn't get a chance to… to _rest_. Bucky's spent the last year and a half learning what it's like to be a normal person. I get the feeling you haven't had that chance yet."

"Wanda's been teaching me to cook, does that count?"

"How's it going?"

"Not so great."

"Yeah. What do you do _outside_ the compound, Steve?"

"You don't think I've done the right thing."

"I think you've chosen the right thing for the world instead of the right thing for Steve Rogers, a foul-mouthed kid from Brooklyn."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're too observant?"

"At some point in my life, it helped me survive. Right now it's telling me I should be worried about my friend." She held up a hand to stop his instant protest. "I can just tell. And I know you wouldn't walk away from anything or anyone asking for help which is why you haven't gotten a break. So I just wanted you to know that I know and if you need anything… we're here."

The magnetic latch disengaging for a second time drew both of their attention. "You two need a minute? Some dramatic background music, maybe?"

"Nice to see you again," Alice greeted Natasha as she joined them, not bothering with a sweater or jacket on the chilly morning.

Nat returned the greeting with a raised eyebrow. "I hear you're just full of surprises."

"Yes, now watch my magic disappearing act!" Alice passed off her coffee cup to the redhead, still mostly full and steaming, and walked back towards the compound with wiggling 'magic fingers'.

"Spectacular. It's like you've gained yet another super-power," Natasha drawled with a grin.

"Aren't you staying?" Steve asked.

Alice shrugged. "I don't have a lot to contribute. I got my throat cut open by a guy in a cape - there; now you know my part."

Steve could hear faint morning conversation as Alice walked back into the compound.

Natasha sipped at the coffee and scowled at the taste. "I leave for a week and you bring home not one but _two_ strays."

Steve avoided what he was sure would be an accusing if amused look. "I think they just followed me home."

"Doesn't mean you can keep them, Rogers." She poured out the coffee that didn't suit her tastes into the grass. "Well, everyone's waiting on you so let's go."

The ordinarily boisterous and friendly atmosphere of the kitchen and common spaces of the compound had fallen into a tense near-silence, interrupted only by requests for introductions and coffee. Bucky watched a corridor from the far wall with such intensity that Steve could be sure it was the point of Alice's recent exit.

Man and machine alike followed as he walked to the conference table and directed Bucky to sit at the head of the table, visible to all parties present. "Alright, Bucky - this is your party."

Someone had been kind enough to get him a cup of coffee, and Bucky clutched it like a lifeline. "We weren't looking for a fight. Just hiding on the edge of the world where we wouldn't bother anyone."

"We?" Wanda asked.

Bucky's gaze stayed fixed low, directed towards the table. "Me and Alice. Alice Sigynsdottir. I knew her from… before. Before I was the Winter Soldier."

Steve tried to direct the debrief. "We can discuss that later - tell us about the attack."

Bucky nodded. "Two days ago, Alice was home and I was working. I saw at the end of my shift that I'd missed a phone call from her, so I got home as fast as possible." He collected his thoughts, clenching his hands together. "The intruder had killed Alice but I knew…" he paused again. "She heals, even from lethal injuries; it just takes time. I tried to keep him talking and focused on me."

Sam leaned forward on the table, resting on his forearms. "Where did he go after he attacked you?"

"I don't know."

Sam continued. "Why did he leave you alive?"

"Alice blew up our house."

"Did you recognize him from your time with HYDRA?" Natasha asked.

"No. Not from my time."

Nat thoughtfully added, "Did anything about his clothes or his weapon seem familiar?"

"He used a sword and a shield - threw it like - kind of like Steve does."

"Kind of like or exactly like?" Steve asked the idea of it concerning him.

Bucky paused, thinking. "Exactly like."

Sam jumped right back in, with: "Did he say anything about who sent him?"

"He said the Hub doesn't come cheap."

Natasha's head shot up. "The Hub sent him? Are you sure he said that?"

Bucky nodded. "I'm sure."

Natasha stood. "Excuse me."

Vision spoke over gently steepled fingers. "Do you believe he intended to kill both of you?"

"Sanction and extract," Bucky described.

"So he tried to kill Alice to... punish you?" Sam sounded appalled.

A muscle in Bucky's jaw twitched as he clenched his jaw tight. "He didn't _try_ to kill Alice. He _killed _Alice. She just luckily happens to be… immune to dying."

"But it was intended to punish you?" Vision probed.

"He started to say something - that it was just the first -"

Vision continued, interrupting with a sudden thought. "Can you be certain that Miss Sigynsdottir didn't lead him to your home?"

Bucky's head shot up, his eyes blazing. "She would _never-"_

"Easy, Buck," Steve held up a hand, trying to soothe Bucky's flaring anger.

"Not even accidentally?" Wanda asked curiously.

Sam grunted. "Alice is the worst secret agent ever. It's possible, Barnes."

Wanda set a hand on Vision's arm as he began to ask what could surely be another probing and offensive question. "Vis is still working on his conversational skills. He didn't mean to offend - did you, Vis?"

Vision tilted his head slightly like an injured puppy. "I'm deeply sorry, Sergeant Barnes. Miss Sigynsdottir seems to be beyond reproach, save for leaving the country with a wanted criminal."

Wanda leaned back in her chair, muttering spitefully. "Good thing we're quite good at hiding wanted criminals."

"Bad news," Natasha announced as she sauntered back into the conference room. "Plug this in, would you?" Natasha tossed Sam the phone and he twisted to set it into the display console.

A woman's face - tired, haggard, stressed - appeared there. Short black hair and an outdated SHIELD uniform. "Okay, Mercedes - you're up with everyone. Can you see alright?" Natasha asked, and the woman nodded.

"_I can - thank you, Natasha."_

"This is Agent Mercedes Merced. She's the handler for the former SHIELD asset known as 'Taskmaster'.' Natasha waved vaguely to the screen. "She's also known as_ The Hub_."

It got all of Bucky's attention in a quick second. "What is your relationship with Taskmaster?"

"_He's my husband," _she answered plainly. _"But he doesn't remember me. Tony Masters also used to be a SHIELD agent but took an experimental serum that enhanced his ability to copy fighting styles. All this comes at a price. When he absorbs new skills it overwrites his memories."_

Steve frowned. "Why is he working for HYDRA… and claiming you sent him?"

The former agent sighed. _"Ordinarily after a mission, he slowly forgets himself and then calls in on a secure line, at which point I can direct him towards a new mission. This time he didn't call in. I have reason to believe that the remnants of HYDRA hijacked his call-in line and are acting as his Hub. While on-mission he is a threat, so he needs to be reset by absorbing a new fighting style; then you'll be safe again."_

"_Reset?_" Bucky ground out.

"_Taskmaster cannot retain short-term memories," _she repeated. _"If he isn't directed towards a mission, he will just continue to do evil things. It's better that he does bad things for the right reasons."_

"But why target Bucky?" Steve asked though he was already considering the possibilities.

"_He was and still is, the best of them. He knows everything there is to know - as the help always does. But, what is most important at this moment, you are their greatest ghost. " _Mercedes stared at Bucky hard, even through the fuzzy connection.

Natasha leaned forward on the table to ensure she could be seen. "Mercedes, you should come in."

Mercedes' attention moved off of Bucky. _"... are you sure that's a good idea?"_

Nat nodded. "You know more about him than anyone."

She considered it and agreed. _"I'll be there as soon as I can. Day after tomorrow, probably."_

"Glad you're finally joining us," Nat smiled.

Mercedes paused. "_... it's a good idea now."_

The line went dead.

"Okay," Steve cleared his throat. "Let's go through it again."

* * *

Bucky sat at the head of the table with his forehead pressed against the wood. His left hand clenched and unclenched as he fought some urge. Alice knelt on the ground, her hand on his knee, speaking so softly Steve couldn't hear a word.

He'd crumbled somewhere around the third go around on the description of events. His insistence, over and over and more powerful every time, that Taskmaster had killed Alice, seemed to be the tipping point.

It had been helpful - extracting more information every time, little details that might prove to be useful.

_His knife work mirrored mine. Mirrored it exactly._

_He knew who I was, but not that Alice has powers._

_He killed Alice._

But he'd crumbled.

_He killed Alice._

He'd leaned over, set his head down on the table, and refused to answer any more questions by simply sitting in silence.

Steve hadcleared the room as delicately as he could, and Natasha had returned with Alice in tow, and she appeared smaller than usual; sleeves on a hugely oversized sweatshirt pushed up to her elbows, and a bit of flour-dusted across her arms. For lack of anything more productive to do, she must have returned to old anxious habits; cooking. She moved past Steve without seeing him as soon as she had spotted Bucky.

Alice ran her free hand through Bucky's hair in a tender moment. He grabbed at her hand with his steel one and she did not flinch but instead laced her fingers through his.

His sense of propriety sent him away, even as his curiosity asked him to stay.

It made sense that he needed Alice. It was Alice that he'd found and run away with to recover himself. I was Alice that he'd lived with for almost two years, piecing together memories and creating a sense of personhood. It was Alice who'd dropped her life to make one for him, who didn't seem nervous to reach for his hand, who hadn't felt the need to greet him with a weapon.

_I don't know how to help my friend_.

The last time he'd seen Bucky there had been such fear and pain written in his skin, projected in his eyes. He'd reached him for a moment - a crucial second of recognition that led to all the recovery that would come after. Had it been enough?

When Bucky stepped off the plane he had been ready - for the Soldier, for a face that did not see him for anything but a target in which to put a bullet - for everything except what had stepped off the plane. The short hair had thrown him first. The ease in his shoulders - still tense, but far more relaxed than before - struck him second. Then his voice; soft, but still chastising Alice.

_I don't know if he wants my help._

He wasn't the Bucky from 1943, and he wasn't the Soldier that had pulled him from the river. He didn't sit somewhere in-between the two either, but somewhere beyond them into the frame of a man that knew himself. Anger still lingered beneath the surface - when he felt threatened or cornered - but could any realistic person say they never felt angry? At least now his anger and despair felt grounded and reasonable and understandable.

There was something he could do. Some hurt he could bandage and repair that had been beyond Alice's reach. It shouldn't make him happy, finding her limit. He shouldn't feel envy when seeing the fruits of her labor - _their_ labor. A thing that they had done together while he waited in the wings for them to finish a dance. But it hurt to know he was not needed; his participation unnecessary.

No, not unnecessary. They had reached the limits of what they could do together and had reached out for more help. Instead of feeling left out or forgotten he needed to focus on the fact that they _had_ reached out, they _had _invited him to dance with them, and they hadn't forgotten him.

"Tony, I need a favor."

"_About time you called, Cap."_

"There's something you should know-"

"_You've got a Soviet assassin putting his feet up on my coffee table? Thanks for the heads up but I'm already on my way."_

Tony hung up before he could utter another word.

Steve stared at the phone.

"Shit."

* * *

A/N: This chapter is mostly a series of expositional bits, but all necessary setup for the next chapter which I'm ACTUALLY excited about. This one still hurt, though. Hard to describe why. I don't love it, but it's all necessary.

I don't know if I hit the mark or not, but I wanted Bucky's debrief to be overwhelming. Repetitive, and overwhelming.

_Language, Steve!_ Steve swears and is a sass-master all the goddamn time, and is so ridiculously anti-authority after TWS that it's not even funny.

Wowza! A couple of you have sent me the Black Widow movie leaks regarding Taskmaster. He's been in my outline since January so just call me a Precog!

Many thanks to my reviewers! AquaBluey, SomebodyWhoCares, Goldenfightergirl, nameword, LisaPark, Sanguinary Tide, sophiedoph, Bimbumel2, TikiKiki, TimeLordsRule, Momochan77, Idontknoworcareanymore, 0peneyeZ, LoveFiction2019, LucyJacob, tuckerjnp1, and TheCauldron!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	24. Deadfall

It wouldn't have been hard to avoid the squealing of tires as Tony Stark pulled up the Avengers compound's long drive, but that would have required both (a) driving slowly and (b) turning slowly. Neither interested him on any occasion. It also made for a hell of a funny introduction to compound life for a set of new trainees out for an early-morning jog along the road. Tony smirked as shocked faces flicked past.

Tony parked in his usual spot - right in the middle of the driveway - and tossed his keys in the usual place on his way in the door. He passed the usual art that he'd bought and hung, though no one seemed to notice or appreciate the nice things he'd bought, and entered the kitchen, intending to get a cup of coffee the way he usually made it, but -

There was an intruder in his kitchen.

"Who are you?" he asked shortly. "FRIDAY, who is she?"

_"A guest of Captain Rogers, boss,"_ the computer supplied.

"Alice," the woman supplied, her tone short.

She didn't look like a HYDRA agent; a tiny thing with long blonde hair in a sloppy braid and clearly no sense of style. HYDRA agents at least had the decency to dress in tailored clothes; this slob was wearing leggings and a huge sweatshirt. "Alright, _Alice_; and why are you in my kitchen?"

She waved a spatula, accidentally flicking a bit of egg onto the counter. "I'm making breakfast."

There was an intruder in his kitchen and she was using his food to make breakfast. "This is my kitchen and I don't remember authorizing the purchase of a house-elf." He pulled out his phone. "What did you say your name was?"

She spoke slowly as she scraped eggs into a serving dish. She kept having to tilt her head slightly to one side to keep the long braid out of the way, distracting her from seeing his less-than-pleased expression. "Alice. Hrafnhildur. Sigynsdottir. Would you like for me to spell it?"

"Oh. You're the Winter Soldier's getaway driver." Tony put his phone away; he already knew who this woman was. He tried to conjure a memory of her government records, idly perused for interest's sake, but they were too bland to remember.

She set the empty pan in the sink and opened the oven door to check on - judging from the smell that wafted his way - a couple of trays of bacon. "That would be me, yes. And you are?"

Definitely not a question he was used to hearing. _"Take a guess."_

She looked up, irritability flashing in nearly pitch-black brown eyes. She stared, tongs in one hand and an oven mitt on the other. She stared, face inscrutable, clearly still processing the image of the person standing before her. While it felt more than a little satisfying to watch the irritating intruder finally realize who they'd been sassing, he also wanted coffee, and she was in the way. "So do you want three guesses or do you think you'll just need the one?"

That seemed to do it. Her face broke into a wide smile, and as her eyes sparkled they lit up with flashes of warm amber. _"OhmygoshIamsosorryMisterStark!"_ she babbled, almost throwing the tongs on the counter, flinging off the oven mitt, and barely patting her hands clean against her hideous sweatshirt before rushing in for a handshake. "It's such an honor! What are you doing here?"

Tony allowed her a good two seconds beyond his comfort zone of handshake before he slowly withdrew his hand. "Well, this is my building, but I'm here to fix your boyfriend's arm; I hear he's trying for a second job as a defibrillator."

"Oh!" Her mouth formed a perfect 'o' as she spoke, accenting the embarrassed flush of her cheeks. "That's so kind of you - thank you so much! Do you want anything while we wait for everyone to join us for breakfast? Coffee?"

She acted far too excited and bouncy for eight in the morning, but it was par for the course so far as introductions to Iron Man typically went. "If you would just move three feet to the left, I can get it myself."

She continued to babble along, though thankfully she did move out of the way and Tony was able to get his much-needed coffee. Warm, soothing, familiar.

He hadn't quite been ready - the caffeine hadn't had a chance to hit yet - when the two super-soldiers walked into the kitchen. Steve, talking animatedly and clearly nearly bursting with energy, walking side-by-side with the enemy.

_Barnes._

"Hey, lovelies - tuck's hot!" Alice called, gesturing to the spread of food she'd laid out on the kitchen island.

"You made breakfast?" Steve asked, seizing a plate and loading it up with stacks of bacon.

Alice smiled, her eyes sparkling and warm. "From what I remember. You said the cooking lessons weren't going so great."

"Couldn't cook before, either," Barnes added, trailing along after Rogers to gather a massive caloric load.

Barnes.

The Winter Soldier.

_Murderer._

Standing in his kitchen and eating bacon like a normal man, like he belonged.

Tony averted his gaze but found himself being watched. Alice's eyes followed him through the room, her hands wrapped around the mug of coffee but not drinking from it. But at the moment she met his gaze, a dazzling smile appeared on her face; lifting her eyes from a deep dark brown to a charming amber.

_She's an old friend,_ Steve had said only briefly when Barnes had first dropped off the map with the little getaway driver. But unhelpfully failed to clarify any further. _I trust her._

_Cap trusts too easily,_ Tony grumbled internally. He'd trusted SHIELD. He'd trusted Fury. He'd trusted Barnes. Murderer. Somehow those big baby blues couldn't see the anger and vengeance and danger that tall, dark, and brooding wore on his skin.

"Something wrong?" Alice asked, suddenly beside him. He'd lost track of her for just a moment and wondered if he'd been staring daggers at Barnes again. But Alice wasn't looking at him, she was looking across the counter at Barnes - who was staring right at Tony.

In need of an instant out, Tony pulled out his phone and shook it once in the air. "I need a scan. Of your arm - unless you enjoy repeated electroshock therapy?"

The soldier looked at Alice - like asking for permission - and she nodded, smiling. "Go on," she encouraged.

With no small amount of hesitation, the soldier held out the arm over the counter, turning it to expose the damaged panel. Tony still somehow expected it to be stained with blood. From all the horrors he'd read in the exposed SHIELD files It should have been dripping out of the panels, pouring out in the floor like it was pouring from a faucet, like-

"Is something wrong?" Alice asked, the question repetitive already.

Barnes held his arm still as Tony took a quick scan with his phone. "There. All done."

The soldier withdrew his arm quickly, hiding the steel fingers in his pocket and turning back to his breakfast after seeking another wave of approval from his would-be handler. She struck up idle chatter almost immediately in the soldier's absence, and Tony tuned her out.

_The model monster._

* * *

Tony liked his workshop. He'd made it himself; a sanctuary of steel and silicon of every shape and form, with a few other compounds thrown in for good measure. And when the solder started to fly, FRIDAY turned the music up and the other Avengers steered clear unless trouble came calling. Tony liked his workshop.

Most of the time.

Tonight he was avoiding a project - very unlike him - by completing a whole other set of projects that had been pushed so far back onto the back burner they'd nearly fallen off the range. Steel plates flexed into something nearly resembling feathers proved difficult to manage stretched out over his workbench, and Tony swore loudly as the threatened to skin him for the third time that night.

_"Careful, boss,"_ FRIDAY reminded.

"That would have been more helpful three seconds ago!" Tony ground, rubbing his arm just to check for broken skin. "Music off." The guitar's energetic wail cut short, taking the drums and bass with it.

"Hey," a light voice greeted from the open door.

Tony glanced up, finding the Winter Soldier's tiny getaway driver standing there. "Your boyfriend's arm panels aren't done yet." He'd been avoiding them all night, nearly losing the skin of his arm in the process.

She strolled lazily into the room, crossing her arms in such a way that made the wide sleeves of the sweatshirt billow and puff up like marshmallows. "I'm looking for something else, actually."

"This stuff's mine, get your own." Tony gave her a long look. "You've got tiny hands, stick one in there would you?" He pointed to the spot in Falcon's wings that had tried to strip his skin off.

"Excuse me?" she asked, her tone coming across as hostile even as the friendly smile she'd been wearing all day stayed true.

Tony twirled his finger, still pointing. "Fish around in there and plug in the loose wire."

"This seems safe," she grumbled, but still pushed up one long sleeve and plunged a slim arm into the machinery without a second thought. "Loose wire?"

"Yep," Tony confirmed, holding the pack in place. "Should feel loose and wirey."

She made a face, held her breath for a second, then "got it." Alice withdrew her hand gingerly, and while she did seem to retrieve all of her fingers unscathed, they were coated in motor oil. She wiped the oil-soaked hand on her sweater, not caring that she'd just ruined it. "What's this for, anyway?"

Tony slid the pack away from the enthusiastic blonde in case she started doing more than instructed. He had no interest in hiding under the worktable until the pack rand out of fuel if she happened to accidentally turn it on. "Your friend, the bird-brain, has a bad habit of flying around tight corners with weak thrusters and hoping real hard that he doesn't go splat."

"These are Sam's wings?" Her eyes widened in awe. "That's so neat!" She grinned, leaning over the workbench to prop up on her elbows. "You're just a big momma hen, aren't you?"

Tony twirled a screwdriver in one hand and pointed with it to make his point. "That would be Captain Freedom, thank you very much."

"Uh-huh." She glanced around the workshop. "You've got a lot of robots in here. Does it get lonely?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "Lonely would imply that I want the constant barrage of noise and intrusions and snack-stealers that come through."

She grinned. "So, as long as I'm quiet and promise not to steal your snacks, you'd let me do a little work here sometimes?"

Tony gestured threateningly with the screwdriver. "And if you don't touch anything – there's a lot of dangerous stuff in this room."

"Scout's honor." Alice lifted three fingers, but they were the wrong three fingers. Tony smirked but chose not to comment. She dropped the hand after possibly realizing it herself, and started wandering around the workroom, staring closely at little odds and bobs, but thankfully not touching anything. "I have a weird question."

Tony could have thrown something. He'd just gotten back into his thought process of how to modify the wings, and she'd already interrupted. "Is it 'what's the best method for maintaining silence while someone is working', because that's the only one I've got answers for right now."

"So you're all the Avengers." She waved a hand vaguely, coming dangerously close to touching something. "Do you ever actually get it – vengeance? Is there peace or gold or just more death at the end of the rainbow?"

It was an oddly thoughtful question for arguably the biggest ditz on the compound, but her open expression implied she'd asked it without prodding for any deeper meaning in her question. Big, deep amber Bambi eyes, and a thoughtfully tilted head. Like a puppy.

"We do our best," he conceded.

Alice hummed, nodding. "That's all we can ask, I guess."

Tony returned his attention, yet again, to the wings. He could see from the corner of his eye as Alice trailed a hand around the edge of the worktable as she rounded to the far end of the room. It didn't process how close she was to danger until she asked - "Why is there a toaster in here?"

He glanced up just as the ditzy woman reached for a big red button on what was definitely not a toaster, but an experimental arc reactor. "I wouldn't touch that if I were you - not unless you want to spend the next five to ten minutes sitting in the dark, wondering why you can't feel your face."

Her hand stopped, and big interested eyes turned to look at him with bright curiosity. "Really?"

Tony sighed in exasperation. "No - it's a toaster. Yes really; hands off, Bambi."

And then something odd happened.

Her spine straightened. Her shoulders rolled back. All the light fell out of her eyes, and her tone flattened as she said "Thanks," and she pressed the red button. A crackling electric sound shot from device to device, overpowering circuits and plunging the room instantly into darkness.

"... FRIDAY?"

The AI did not answer.

A deafening silence, absent the comforting hum of electronics, pressed against his ears. Interrupted by-

_Click._

Metal against metal.

"You're a difficult man to understand, Stark."

_Click._

Steel on steel.

"Busy, determined, and always so guarded."

_Click click._

The emergency lights kicked on, casting a deep red glow through the room.

Alice Sigynsdottir sat on the work table, legs crossed, carefully loading rounds into the magazine of a pistol that lay on the table before her. She finished loading swiftly, snapped the magazine into place and loaded a round into the chamber. "I have five to ten minutes of your undivided attention, and I intend to use it."

All the warm light had gone out of her eyes. No more amber twinkle and no more light laughter. Dead, cold eyes, made darker by dim red lighting, stared out of a passionless face.

_This is not the same person._

Tony had to wonder, but couldn't take much time for the thought, if he'd only met the real Alice Sigynsdottir when she'd taken all of his power away.

She didn't point the handgun at him, but she'd already made it clear that the weapon existed so there wasn't much of a need. "You've got an interestingly complicated fortress here, Stark. You're no stranger to violence, I know that much; even lost a house because of something flippant you said on the news. This," she waved a finger in a circle, "is a correction of that mistake, isn't it? Do you learn from your mistakes, Stark?"

He moved slowly around the table, not taking his eyes off the monster at his table but still testing switches on equipment. No luck yet. "Is there a real question in there somewhere, something from a less Romantic era?"

She seemed unconcerned with his confirmation that he was indeed trapped. "What did you learn when SHIELD fell, Stark?"

Tony's mind raced; what was her goal? She had yet to threaten him with the gun but had made it clear she had one. An establishment of power, of superiority, of advantage. "That Fury is a sonofabitch-"

She interrupted as he grabbed a screwdriver, her eyes watching every move. "What did you think when you read that Bucky killed your parents?"

He froze. "How did you-"

Her braid slipped over her shoulder as Alice tilted her head to one side. "I know what you are, Stark, and I know that you wouldn't have been able to resist pawing through every scrap of information once it hit the internet. I can see that you hate him. You're dangerous because you hate him; completely and utterly you hate him, but you haven't tried to hurt him. Do you plan to?"

"That's a loaded question if ever I heard one." Another establishment of power, of authority and advantage.

Something in his answer clearly angered her. Alice raised the pistol, pointing it steadily at his face. "Answer the question."

Tony stared past the gun, trying to find some humanity in her face. "He's killed people."

She shrugged a shoulder, but the gun stayed level. "So have you. So has Steve. So have I."

So damn flippant, like it didn't matter, like there wasn't a difference -"He killed _my parents_."

A little of her cold façade melted as she gave him a sympathetic look. "HYDRA made him kill the only person still alive who remembered him as a man. After that," she spread her arms slightly, "he was alone."

Frustration mounting as subsequent tests of switches proved that he had nowhere to hide, nothing to protect himself, the very idea that he should just accept it was too much. "Let's just write him a diagnosis of _sad_ to write off _murder_!"

She crossed her arms, the pistol resting in the crook of her elbow. Voice quiet, despite his yelling, she asked; "It must get lonely in here with just your robots."

A light flickered at the corner of his glasses - FRIDAY's 'pilot light'. _"Working on the reboot, boss,"_ the AI finally whispered in his ear.

More confident now, Tony grabbed a spare Iron Man repulsor, trying to look nonchalant, and like he was just verifying that it was still offline; he even poked at it with a screwdriver for good measure. "Lonely is for puppies and teenagers."

"Do you learn from your mistakes, Stark?" She repeated the question, though the inflection had changed. It sounded like a teacher trying to encourage a student to have an original thought, to lead down a line of questioning to an informed conclusion.

Tony wouldn't bite; he'd had his fair share at MIT and had dropped out for a reason. "Stop asking me that."

"I ask because you seem terribly lonely." She continued after a brief pause, "Or do generally solitary and not-lonely people build huge fortress-like compounds for friends and colleagues, encourage them to live there with spectacular living conditions, and then continue to invite more and more people?"

"Tell me," she slipped off of the table, approaching his position in the room like stalking prey, "what mistakes do you think you might make if, after all your connections to the world are stripped away, you're left with nothing but a gun and a mission from someone who tells you it's right?" Her voice dropped to a thoughtful register as she lifted the pistol steadily to point it at his head again. "Out of desperation not to lose that last link to the world, do you think you might fire the gun? You don't know what right or wrong are anymore, only the road and the mission and a target they put in front of you."

"Now that you're separated from all of your toys and guns and robots, what would happen if I gave you a gun? Would you fire it?" She lowered the pistol like a peace gesture, but it was hard to see if there was any honesty in her expression in the deep red light. "What kind of strength might it take not to fire, if only just one time?" The little predator sounded sad as she asked, "Do you have the strength not to fire at the things that scare you?"

"You think I'm going to kill Barnes." Tony said it out loud as the realization hit him, but he probably should have taken a few moments to process the idea.

She seemed neither surprised nor offended by his revelation. "I don't trust people who believe that power and strength somehow makes all their actions right."

Tony slammed the screwdriver blade-down into the table. Alice didn't have the dignity to flinch, though her grip appeared to tighten around the pistol. "We've stopped the earth from being destroyed not once but twice, and that's not enough to make our actions right?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Not every time. Who's to say you don't start slipping? It's easy to compromise just a little, and then that's the new normal. Where's the line for you, Stark? Advanced interrogation? Torture? Dismemberment? Murder? The distance between any one of those points is not that large."

"We are not murderers." Murder implied something sinister, something vindictive, something like the dark seed of HYDRA that had slipped past his notice.

"Anyone who has killed a person is a murderer. I think that Vision is the only one who isn't a murderer in your little group, and that's probably just a matter of time and probability."

_"Almost there, boss."_ FRIDAY updated.

Emboldened, Tony tried to go on the offensive. "What are you hoping to get out of this whole… interrogation?"

She seemed unphased. "I want to know if you're the monster I fear you are." She leaned forward, propping her head up in her hands. "I want to know if I have to kill you to keep the people I love safe."

Direct, at least. "They'd never forgive you."

"I can live with that," she said, with just enough sadness to make it believable.

Tony tried a redirect. "Aren't you and Red October on the run from some big bad guy? What do you do if you burn this bridge?"

Alice ignored the redirect entirely. "Why did you build the compound?"

Tony blinked, trying to follow the new train of thought as the last one derailed. "What?"

Somehow he'd expected her to gesture with the pistol - she'd been an animated talker before - but she didn't. "This big building full of people with powers and blind faith- why did you build it?"

"Because rent in midtown is obscene," he rambled.

"Try again, and don't lie with sarcasm," she bit back.

"What do you want from me!?" Tony exclaimed.

"I want to know why you built the compound."

"You want to know why I built all this - why I keep taking in strays and paying to keep the lights on?"

She nodded, her cold, dark eyes still fixed and searching for something in his words.

Tony took a steadying breath, but it didn't help. "if I don't keep the lights on, keeping all of this together, then that's the end!"

"The end of what?" she asked her tone level and leading. "What are you so afraid of?"

Tony gesticulated with one arm, the other still resting on the repulsor. He just needed time. "The end of the Avengers - the end of a watchful eye over everyone just trying to keep their lights on. What the hell is the world supposed to do when the third threat to life as we know it comes barreling down the gun if I don't?"

She seemed unsatisfied. "Somebody else would. You're not the first person to create an army of power."

"We are not soldiers!" He roared.

She tilted her head back, jutting out her chin defiantly. "Tony Stark's Private Army - needs someone from marketing to give it a better name, but it works for now. Isn't that how you got your fortune, anyway?"

Tony was ready for her this time. "And yet no amount of money could have paid Loki to leash up his pets and take them back home; no amount of money could have stopped Ultron-"

But Alice had also come prepared. "You made Ultron. Haven't you realized that all of your own problems are of your own making? You've hurt everyone you keep close to you. What if you don't deserve what you have? What if you deserve to be alone, struggling to fight against that third threat while everyone screams against your efforts?"

The lights kicked on.

Alice looked away, squinting at the sudden brightness.

"I'm not alone." He picked up the repulsor, reveling in the familiar hum of the electronics he could feel through his skin and fired it.

Maybe he shouldn't have fired. She'd barely pointed the gun at him at all - more threatened him with ambiance and angry words. She didn't even try to dodge, but took the shot straight on, spinning her at the shoulder and dropping her cold.

"Shit!" He ran around the table, already reaching for a first aid kit on the far shelf. He hadn't actually been trying to hit her; just scare her like she'd just been trying to scare him. "Hang on - Jesus you're bleeding-"

"Calm down," she grunted, easing up into a seated position, pulling her hand away from a singed and bleeding shoulder.

Tony nearly ripped the lid off the little first aid kit as he tried to open it faster than the hard plastic would allow. "I didn't – I didn't mean to shoot you. I wouldn't – you're just a kid."

She held up her hand, stopping him from touching her. "Just shut up for a second and you won't feel so bad." She grunted in discomfort, shifting in place. "There it goes." She looked at her shoulder, and Tony's attention followed.

Her skin around the wound sort of… fluttered. It fluttered in the way that old screens used to when someone paused a home video. The bruise and blood stopped expanding, the skin's sizzle quieting. Then time seemed to roll in reverse, slowly, picking up speed as the bruise receded, bubbles and blisters shrank, and the skin pinked up as though she'd never lost a drop of blood.

"There." Alice wiped away the remaining blood with the corner of a sleeve. "No harm done."

Tony reeled back. _"What are you?"_

He expected her to look victorious. She'd won; she'd frightened him

He expected her to look angry. He'd lost; he'd resorted to violence.

He hadn't expected her to look so deeply hurt.

Her mouth twisted, trembling along with something painful, opened ready to berate, but snapped shut as her head turned, listening. She tucked the pistol out of sight as footsteps pounded down the hall.

She stood just before Rogers pushed open the door. He surveyed the room with a look of concern. "Hey, everything alright in here? The power went out for a minute."

"It was seven minutes!" Alice beamed at Steve, that charismatic glitter back again, but she kept her bloody shirtsleeves concealed behind her back. "We were just having a chat."

Steve narrowed his eyes at Tony, clearly suspicious but clearly with the wrong person. "He's not bothering you, is he?"

Tony spluttered. "Me? She-" Alice shot him a venomous look that clearly said I will shoot you right now if you say anything. "... is a delightful creature. I'm so glad that she's staying for..." he cocked his head in Alice's direction. "How long are you staying, exactly?"

Steve gestured for Alice to follow him out of the workroom, adding: "As long as she needs, Tony."

_Romanoff all over again._

* * *

A very tired Tony shuffled into the kitchen mid-morning the next morning. No sleep and no answers make Tony a grumpy, grumpy muppet. All insult added to injury that, as he shuffled into the kitchen in search of a powerful dose of caffeine, a certain psychopathic pistol-wielding blonde was already standing in the kitchen, stirring a pot.

He contemplated abandoning his caffeine mission, but decided that he wasn't going to last much longer without the stuff, and it was worth risking another tongue-lashing. "Hey Sibyl, where'd Capsicle and the Manchurian Candidate get to?" Tony asked, slipping around her to snag a mug from the drying rack.

She seemed unbothered by his presence, even shifting out of his way a bit. "They went to the armory, I think. Bucky does his best thinking when he can take something apart."

"And you're doing what now, exactly?" Tony quizzed, pouring himself a cup of glorious, glorious caffeine.

"Making cocoa," Alice supplied.

That much was evidenced by his nose. It smelled good, but he needed to focus. A sip of coffee helped to start clearing the gathering cobwebs in his brain. Gently, so as not to provoke the reappearance of firearms, Tony went on the offensive. Or rather, he stepped off the defensive. "No, what's your angle? You can't be more than just a getaway driver because you're nobody, actually nobody."

Of all things, she smiled. A quirk of the corner of her lip. Unconcerned with his accusations. "I'm here to protect my family."

"Well, so am I. Which is why I was up all night going through every part of your life over and over again, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion; you are nobody. And I need to know why a nobody is protecting an ex-Russian assassin."

He slid the phone across the counter. She picked it up and scrolled through the photos he'd left there for her to see; proof of his hunt.

He'd left it open to her abandoned facebook page - not updated in half a decade - and even he could see that a very different person lived in Alice Sigynsdottir's skin now. Sure, same shape of eyes and color of hair, height, weight - all the things a government agency or an artificial intelligence might use to track someone through their lives, but everything else had changed. Alice hunched over in the old photos; tried to make herself look small, hid behind waves of golden hair. This Alice stood tall with bold posture, held her chin high, and did not hide the cold indifference of her eyes.

She finished flipped through the photos, and he could feel the chill emanating from her eyes as the appraised him. Calculating. Predatory. She averted her gaze and typed something into the phone. "I'm glad you consider the Avengers your family, Mister Stark. I think we make our best choices, and sometimes our worst choices, based on our love of family."

Alice slid the phone back across the counter and nodded to it before returning to mixing her cocoa. "Like I said," she smiled slyly, "I'm protecting my family."

She'd opened a Wikipedia page.

**The Angel of Azzano**

_The Angel of Azzano (also known as "the Witch of the Western Front" and "The Cavalry of the Commandos") was a member of the United States Army Nurse Corps, identified as First Lieutenant Alice Shaw, stationed originally with the 111th Field Hospital during the latter half of World War II. After being captured with the 107th at Azzano, Lt. Shaw joined the Howling Commandos as a secret member until her death on November 1944, on the USS LST-6 during routine transport to SSR headquarters in London, UK._

Tony was bored already. "Why is this relevant?"

Alice sighed, like someone trying to teach an impatient child a much-needed lesson. "Keep reading. Try not to skip entirely over the table of contents this time." She tasted the cocoa, made a sour face, and added another heaping cup of sugar.

Tony skimmed through the list, reading only with ten percent of his attention.

**Contents**  
_1\. The 111th Field Hospital_  
_2\. On Azzano_  
_3\. Prisoners of War_  
_\- 3.1 Protecting the Troops_  
_\- 3.2 Under HYDRA's Fist_  
_4\. Escape_  
_\- 4.1 Captain America_  
_5\. The Howling Commandos_  
_\- 5.1 Thwarting Project Valkyrie_  
_6\. USS-LST 6_  
_7\. Recognition_  
_8\. Historical Significance_  
_9\. See Also_  
_10\. Notes_  
_11\. References_  
_\- 11.1 Bibliography_  
_12\. External Links_

Tony was lost. What was he missing? Clearly, she'd expected him to make some vivid connection. He looked over at her, the question evident.

She'd started ladling cocoa into two mugs and didn't bother giving him any attention. "Once more. Try actually looking at the photos."

For the last time, Tony looked through the Wikipedia page, starting with the title, reading carefully through the paragraphs, hopping over the three photos-

He stopped.

His thumb flipped the page upwards again.

There were exactly three photos of the long-dead Lieutenant. A photo half-concealed, as she stepped out of frame from a group photo of nurses from the 111th Field Hospital. A photo forlorn, looking out from the open bed of a truck, and the last, he found cold dark eyes, caught unawares, and wild light hair.

It shouldn't have been so easy to see, but his brain did all the heavy lifting. Eyes, dark, same shape. Hair, light, cannot confirm color from a black and white photograph, but the texture seemed the same. The jut of the chin, curve of jaw and nose - there was no mistake.

Alice Sigynsdottir.

_Alice Shaw._

He sat down heavily on a barstool, nearly tipping it sideways.

"There we go." Alice laughed shortly, like a bark. "I forget sometimes that, on a cell phone, the photos aren't immediately visible; especially if you skim right past the table of contents."

Tony's eyes stayed fixed on the photos, glowing in the dim light projected by the screen. "Do you have any proof that's actually you and not some... stunning generational likeness?"

A copper bullet rolled lazily across the granite towards him, trailing a chain of gold behind it. It didn't quite come to a stop, and Tony had to catch it before it rolled off the countertop. He rolled it between his fingers, finding something scratched on the round.

_Alice Shaw_

He stammered a moment as his brain ran a quick data compilation and presented a new possibility. "You could have easily done that yourself."

Alice nodded, setting down two cups of cocoa, brimming to the very top of the white porcelain mugs, on the kitchen island. "True. But do you think I did?"

He did not.

His brain ran a new compile on the data.

"So what are you, exactly?" He squinted at the text of the Wikipedia page again. "Evil robot sent from the future to deploy skynet?"

Alice snagged the bullet from his grip. "I'm a mutant, not a monster, Stark." She tugged the chain over her head and tucked the bullet pendant under her sweater. "I also did happen to travel through time, but just once, and not to eliminate humanity." She waved a hand around as if to swat away flies or questions. "But that's not important now."

Tony turned the phone's screen off and set it down. When he looked up, the same face was waiting. Eyes a little harder, hair a little longer, but the same face. "Exactly how many more time-spanning super soldiers should I expect to meet in my lifetime?"

She shrugged a shoulder, picking up the fuller of the two mugs. "I only know about the three of us, but I don't know; Natasha's secrets have secrets."

There were so many questions he could ask; a never-ending litany of how and when and what to try to detail the specifics of bridging time and space. His brain threw them out in a list that could have spilled onto the floor and out the door. But he kept coming back to his enemy, to her defense of his enemy, and to her sudden reversal of hostility.

He frowned. "So now we're supposed to believe Barnes is all better because you've kissed his brain's boo-boos goodbye."

Alice took the free barstool, her legs swinging freely in the air. "If that's how you like to think about it, sure." She looked so calm and serene, it burned him. The hatred and cold hostility in her eyes had melted away in the red emergency lights. What he might have seen as a hunter's posture could also be interpreted as calm ease; she was not standing straight because she was waiting for the opportunity to attack, but because she was not preparing to defend herself from attack.

This cocoa-cooking calm was a direct result of her terror-inducing confrontation with Tony, and for the life of him, he didn't understand why.

"I don't like you." The sentence captured the essence of his frustration in the best way.

Yet again, she seemed unconcerned. "Somehow I think I'll be able to live with that. Have some cocoa, Stark." She nodded her head to the second cup of cocoa.

He scrutinized it. "It's not poisoned, is it?"

She looked appalled. "I would never do that to cocoa!"

* * *

**A/N**: It's Dark! Alice, returned from 1944. Now we've had this interesting triad of POV's through the compound, and that's honestly all I've planned for the non-Buck/Alice POVs. I'm trying to keep this twisty plot nonsense straight in my head so please be forgiving. This chapter has beeing holding me up for two weeks, but I think it's at a place I'm ready to show it.

I edited out some really great content from here that I was sad to see go - but I hope that there's the opportunity to use it later. It was an interesting experience to write from the point of view of someone on the receiving end of Alice's bad side. She's become an expert at manipulation herself, though she hasn't realized how poisonous that could be, or that it's not what she wanted to become.

However, my goal for this chapter was for the reader to side with Tony, not Alice, even knowing what you do about Alice's motivations.

Question: do y'all read the chapter titles?

Second question: What did Alice determine during her interrogation that made her okay with Tony?

Many thanks to my reviewers: Sanguinary Tide, TimeLordsRule, AquaBluey, TrilbyBard, Momochan77, rosafern, LisaPark, 0peneyeZ, Sulia Serafine, SabakuNoGaara426, LoveFiction2019, Lucy Jacob, xRaspberryx, TikiKiki, nekokairi, and LeandraWhite!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	25. The Circus

Bucky missed Iceland. It had only been a few days since leaving the little red cabin on the outskirts of Akureyri, and everything had changed from textures to smells to-

_Thud_. _"Ow!"_

-sounds. Bucky rolled over in bed to do his best to turn his body towards the sound "Did you hit your foot on the door jamb again?" he asked sleepily into the darkness. Alice had been struggling to adjust as well - all of her mental maps had been thrown off in the new place, and where she usually was so comfortable walking around in the dark or reaching for items without looking, she was constantly tripping or dropping things.

"Ow, ow, ow…" Alice leaned in the doorframe, clutching her foot. "My poor pinky toe!" Alice stuck out her foot, still grasping it tightly in an impressive display of flexibility. "Kiss it better?"

Bucky fluffed his pillow with a fist and propped himself up with it. "I'm not kissing your foot, Doll."

She pouted, her lower lip trembling with fake woe, still holding her foot out. Bucky expected her knees to give out in a few seconds from the extended stretch.

"C'mere and I'll give you a kiss - _not_ on your foot." No amount of time or exposure would give Bucky an immunity to Alice's pout. He didn't mind.

Her face broke into a smile and she dropped her foot, hopping over to Bucky's side of the bed and leaning over, her hair falling in a golden curtain around his face. Bucky seized her around the waist and heaved her onto the bed, eliciting a shriek of laughter from Alice.

"Just because you heal quick doesn't mean you don't need to watch where you're going! When are you going to take care of yourself?" Bucky asked, wrapping his arms around her middle to keep Alice from wriggling away. He kissed along her neck and she cried out in joking protest.

"Your beard is so scratchy!" Alice pushed against his chest, though they both know she had no hope of actually getting the better of him.

"Oh? It's scratchy?" Bucky asked, releasing her slightly. Alice moved slightly away, her expression suspicious. Bucky pounced, wrapping his steel arm under her backside to lift her, and she grabbed at the headboard for support. With his right, he tugged up at her oversized sleep-shirt and scratched the left side of his face against the smooth skin of her belly vigorously.

"_Noooo!_" Alice cried, her stomach trembling with laughter. She pushed off of the headboard and Bucky lost out to leverage; she flopped back towards the foot of the bed, taking Bucky's torso with her. She tried to roll away but he still had a firm grip around her waist and he wasn't ready to let go yet.

He peacefully let his head rest on her stomach, caressing the skin of her middle and tracing the shape of her back. He knew every indentation by heart like they marked the way to his soul. The smell of her skin would drift in and out of his dreams, like a lighthouse guiding him through turbulent nightmares. He could have almost all senses stripped away, but as long as he had even one remaining he would always be able to find Alice.

He relaxed further as Alice ran her fingers through his hair, her nails massaging his scalp as they raked his short hair into something better than bed-head. "You alright, Bucky?"

"Just a few more minutes," he pleaded into her skin. With the light just starting to creep in through the curtains, they only had a few minutes before-

The tromping of boots rattled the walls; their routine wake-up call interrupting the last moment of peace for the morning. "Well, time's up I guess," Alice chuckled. Reluctantly, Bucky released Alice's waist and she slid from his grip, swinging her legs over the side of the bed but not standing quite yet.

"I'm going to rip his damn wings off," Bucky grumbled. He still maintained Wilson had put them up in a room close to the staff barracks on purpose.

"You already did - another time would just be vindictive." Alice's fingers danced through her hair, plaiting the wild golden river into a quick braid. "Do you think I should cut this?" She tugged at her long hair. "I think it tried to strangle you last night."

He hummed thoughtfully. "Turnabout's fair play, I guess."

She smacked his shoulder, clearly less than pleased with his answer. "This is not an equality conversation."

He tugged on the braid. "Don't cut it." He liked the ritual of watching her braid it every morning and the slow battle she lost during the day as her hair slowly unbraided itself; spilling loose in thin rivers of pale gold until Alice gave up and let it pour over her shoulders in wild waves.

"No?" She pulled her hair out of his grip, fiddling with a lock of hair that had already come loose near the end.

"Not unless you really want to," he added placatingly.

Alice clucked her tongue and threw the braid back over her shoulder, grabbing some clothes from a pile on the dresser. "We should get going - get you some coffee before your meeting starts."

There was something ungainly about watching Alice get dressed; far from elegant, she plunged her feet into leggings and shoved them around until she happened to find a hole to come out of. Tank tops and sweaters were donned similarly, yanking the head-hole over her head and shoving her hands into sleeves, wriggling them around to find an exit. It always looked like she'd vaguely heard of the concept of wearing clothes, but generally seemed opposed to the idea and was now being forced into it.

Alice caught him watching and raised an eyebrow. "Are you planning on going to the meeting in just your underthings? Because as much as I might appreciate that, some of the others might feel inferior and that's just not fair."

Bucky chuckled and finally gave up the ghost on staying in bed all day. He dressed with little better grace as Alice waited impatiently, and had to pull his boots on as they walked out the door. Alice rounded the first corner without looking and immediately bumped into someone. "Oh I'm so sorry!" she cried.

She had, of course, run into a platoon of trainees headed off on their first morning run. A chorus of "ma'am"s and "no worries" and "it's ok" ran past as they reformed the formation she'd disrupted. Bucky could feel himself collecting stares as he stood next to the little blonde.

Whatever amusement and warmth her smile and beguiling nature inspired he could see drain away as eyes slipped from her to him. Amusement turned to curiosity at the shifting panels on his arm and the glimmer of perfect steel. Curiosity inevitably turned to fear as second, always second to the arm, their attention turned to the intense fire in his eyes. He did not enjoy being stared at.

"How are the new panels?" Alice asked abruptly as the crowd passed, blindly reaching out her hand and wiggling her fingers, asking wordlessly for him to take it.

Bucky rolled his shoulder and flexed the arm's fingers before taking her hand. He was still working out the kinks. "They're working. Doesn't feel quite the same, though."

Alice's hand fit too well woven around the weapon's fingers. "Stark did a pretty good job." She led him along by that weapon, her thumb stroking a seam between two panels in his index finger - a favorite spot of hers.

"How can you be sure? You were so close I think you went cross-eyed staring over his shoulder when he was installing the panels." He'd hurt her with that arm many times; waking violently in the night and striking out at a vanishing enemy that wouldn't let go of the nightmare. When her fingers warmed the steel and squeezed in encouragement, he could almost forget that.

She had to let go to pour two cups of coffee, throwing a spoonful of honey in both; a habit she'd picked up since 1944. Stress began to wring his bones as the compound woke up, Steve and Romanova giving remarkably calm greetings as they accepted coffee from Alice. The Russian actually didn't appear to check the coffee for poison, even though he could be certain that she did.

"_Agent Merced has arrived," _FRIDAY interrupted the easy morning chatter.

"I'll meet her in the lobby," Romanova offered. "Thanks," she said briefly to Alice, lifting the coffee in reference.

"Oh!" Alice flushed, "It's no-" Romanova was already out the door. "...trouble." She looked disappointed, unable to revel in her little victory of thanks from the Spider, but the expression slid from her face quickly.

"She'll warm up to you," Steve reassured Alice, holding out his empty cup for more coffee.

Bucky had been about to say that _was_ warm for the Russian, but clearly, it had been a long time since they'd really known each other. "I'm sure everything is fine. Not everyone has to like you."

"But I want _her_ to!" Alice moaned, sliding her cup of coffee away so she could flop dramatically over on the counter. "She's so cool."

The computer that ran the compound must have alerted more than their little group about the Agent's arrival, Bucky determined, as more of the new Avengers filtered through the kitchen. They collected an array of foods for breakfast; coffee and toast, fruit and juice, and the Vision just watched everyone with mild interest, keeping his fingers interlaced hesitantly in front of him.

Bucky could almost envy the fluidity with which the robot moved. Constructed entirely of metal far stronger than the steel of Bucky's arm, Vision's movements lacked the little catches and twitches of Bucky's newest limb. It felt like envy to look upon him and know that the Avengers did not see the same unforgiving strength in those hesitant hands that they could see in Bucky's silver plates.

"You coming, Buck?" Steve asked, jerking Bucky's attention back to the crowd. Gathering in the direction of the far conference room; Bucky had gotten lost in his thoughts and missed the rallying summons.

"Just a sec," he replied, conjuring an excuse for his lag. He held out his mug for one more cup of coffee and Alice happily refilled it.

"Good luck," she said lowly and with a smile. "I'll be around if you need me." She waved him away, preventing him from lingering in the kitchen and stalling any longer.

The hot cup of coffee - probably his third of the morning by that point - warmed his hands and gave him something to hold on to as he walked into the conference room. Stark had taken a seat away from the table, observing the entire room. Rhodes, Romanova, and Steve took one side of the conference table, with Vision, Maximoff, and the bird-brain Wilson holding down the other side. Uncomfortable with the thought of sitting at the head of the conference table, Bucky simply stood at the rear of the room.

"Once we're all comfortable, I'll get started." The room's last occupant, only previously seen through a poor video connection, observed the room like a teacher waiting for the class to settle down. Merced stood next to the conference screen and toyed with a small controller, pressing buttons until two photos appeared on the screen - one of which was familiar to Bucky, one that seemed nearly human. He recognized the grinning skull mask peering out from underneath a white hood, but the man in the second picture looked nearly… ordinary. Dark of hair and eye, his SHIELD identification photo looked like any other Brooklyn Irish Catholic fella he and Steve might have grown up knowing.

Merced gestured to the photos, her tone oddly ambivalent for someone discussing their spouse. "Tony Masters. also known as _Taskmaster_, is for all intents and purposes; a SHIELD agent. Even after taking the serum, he has continued to operate under SHIELD management to ensure domestic security. His skills range as widely as they possibly can, though they are limited to tactics, weapons, and combat."

Stark leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. "It does sound so _very _Nick Fury to keep a supervillain on the books."

"Where do these skills come from?" Steve asked.

Merced toyed with the clicker, betraying subtle anxiety. "He can absorb from film, as long as the skill is displayed thoroughly, though most have come from hand-to-hand experience. He's trained HYDRA agents-"

"Before or after the fall?" Stark interrupted.

"Excuse me?" Merced asked.

Stark leaned forward in his chair again, his tone accusing. "Masters trained HYDRA agents - did he train them before or after the fall of SHIELD? Did he train HYDRA agents knowing that they were HYDRA?"

Merced let the question hang as though she might not answer at all, or possibly that she might give some non-answer. But instead, after that contemplative pause, she answered: "Yes."

"Why?" Rhodes, Stark's right hand as much as he was Steve's left, asked with far less anger than Stark had been prepared to throw.

Merced let her attention change targets slowly, as though she wasn't certain Stark would be able to maintain his composure. "Because he needed a mission, and I determined that to be the least damaging action at that time."

"The least damaging-" Rhodes stammered, "what exactly is Masters capable of that you thought the _least damaging_ thing you could assign him to do is train HYDRA agents?"

Merced tapped the clicker in her hand but didn't actually do anything with it. "I guess it's difficult to imagine how dangerous Masters really is. When he fights, he first uses all of the skills he's already absorbed - this much is subconscious, he doesn't really know where the skills came from, just that they're available - but if there comes a moment when he doesn't believe the skills he already possesses will win him the fight, or if he's just feeling particularly vindictive, he quickly learns the exact style of his opponent and uses it to drive them into the ground." Her gaze swept the room. "He could do that with any of you, save perhaps Miss Maximoff and Vision, as he can't replicate the magic."

A silence heavy with implication pressed against the walls. Merced, in no rush to surrender the pulpit she'd built, continued. "My husband does the hard jobs, the things that don't look good splashed across the front page of the newspaper or running on ticker tape in Times Square. The removal of enemies that murder women and children without mercy requires a heavy hand, so what does it matter that he does it because he believes that they're his competition, and not because they're a domestic threat?"

Maximoff breathed a tight hiss. "All that and I'm the one being demonized on the news?"

Merced jumped to defend him. "Masters isn't a bad man - he just… believes that he is. It would be torture to throw him in prison; he'd forget why he's there. He'd suffer… endlessly. Hopeless, without purpose. It's far better to leave him in the field, helping SHIELD to rebuild… in his own way."

"His own way seems to be killing people," Stark commented snidely.

Merced sighed, like an impatient teacher trying to pound information into their brains. "_He doesn't remember_. He's the best possible option - he doesn't suffer for it, he doesn't have to regret it."

"You can't know that," Bucky interjected.

Merced raised an eyebrow. "I can."

Bucky had to focus hard not to crack the mug of coffee in his hands. "No, you _can't_. You want to know how I know you can't?"

"Bucky-" Steve tried, but Bucky ignored him, driving on. This was one hill he was willing to fight for, because how could they _possibly_ understand?

"Because my handlers and commanders never asked how I _felt_ after a mission. There's more than a few memories rattling around in the empty space of the last seventy years, but I'm pretty sure about that part." Bucky's veins hummed with anger. Not the hot, bright kind that felt like lashing out and breaking things or the hilt of a knife in his grip, but the deep smoldering kind that whispered _this isn't fair_.

Agent Merced casually observed his anger. Like one hunter can recognize a hunter, Bucky knew she could see it. But she seemed unconcerned, taking a seat at the table and setting down the clicker as if sitting down while he stood might somehow make her less threatening. As she tried to dissect him with a disapproving look, he returned the favor.

She didn't look like much in a passing glance; also dark-haired and dark-eyed like her husband, but while he looked so perfectly ordinary Merced looked wild and tired all at once. Straight hair stuck out at angles from her head, like something constantly windswept after someone had tried to style it properly. While Masters looked perfectly ordinary, Merced looked like a wild creature that had simply tired itself out, but you could only see it in her eyes.

She rapped her knuckles on the table. "Sergeant Barnes, how much do you remember?"

"This isn't about me." Bucky didn't appreciate the diversion. He was familiar with the type - if you inspire irritation and anger with a question, it's easy enough to divert attention away from the real topic.

Mercedes drove the knife deeper. "You wanted to talk about your experience, so yeah; it is about you. But more than that, you and Masters share a lot of the same traits. He forgets; you forget."

"Only when someone _makes_ me forget. Your husband _chose_ this," Bucky snapped back.

Merced stared him down. "Yes. He did. And he'll never stop punishing himself for it."

Bucky could hear the trap snap shut as he realized he was meant to feel ashamed in that moment; who was he to point fingers at someone living a life nearly identical to the one he'd barely managed to cast off? He could see the disappointment, the judgment, in the faces of the Avengers as he argued so heatedly with Merced. They saw Alice in her - a watcher over some unstable weapon - but couldn't understand Bucky's frustration at the way they spoke about that weapon.

But Bucky remembered - he knew what it could be like to pull that trigger as doubt crept in behind the eyes. Bucky remembered - he knew what it could feel like to hear fear in the voice of your Commander and wonder what greater demons lingered around the corner.

Bucky didn't need convincing that Masters was someone they needed to help; he remembered well enough the hell of it. He just didn't agree that this could be the _only_ way.

Steve cleared his throat. "There's a trainee course starting soon; let's take a break."

As Bucky looked to his friend, registering the concern that drove a furrow in Steve's brow, he realized that maybe Bucky wasn't the person Merced had been trying to convince.

* * *

The kitchen contained a lot of evidence resembling Hurricane Alice; mixing bowls coated in something resembling batter soaking in the sink, flour dusting several surfaces that one generally wouldn't use flour on, and several plates of cookies all labeled with post-it notes reading "eat me".

But no Alice.

Bucky followed the trail of destruction and attempted repair that meandered through the Avengers' spaces; books pulled from shelves and put back in the wrong place, stacks of magazines she'd re-sorted by color instead of topic or title, and plants who'd been carefully pruned to remove any dead or diseased leaves and moved into a better spot either in or out of the light. All very little changes, but blazing beacons of familiarity to Bucky.

He frowned as the trail led to an open door - propped open, even, to let in a breeze - with Alice's shoes abandoned at the edge of the grass that battled with the edge of a concrete patio for dominance.

"FRIDAY, where's Alice?"

"_My sensors say she's on the East quarter of the compound, far side the helipad."_

"Thanks."

It was a very Alice kind of day outside. The compound was home to a wide variety of birds, all chasing after a wide variety of insects, generally humming along at the speed of nature in warm early summer sunshine.

Following a bit of flattened grass in an area where no one really seemed to walk; the meandering path bouncing from tree to tree to an outcropping of wildflowers, leading him to believe the strange pattern could only come from one uneasy mind.

He circled a final tree, stepped over a fallen branch, and followed its crash course in reverse up through the oak's solid boughs. "Doll," Bucky called. "You climbed a tree?"

A head of golden hair appeared as she leaned around a thick seat, followed on the opposite side by bare-footed legs. "I found a great tree; don't you agree?"

He could only raise a skeptical brow. "Didn't you twist your ankle last time you climbed a tree?"

She waved her hand dismissively. "That's not important to this conversation."

"Could you come down, please?"

"I'd love to, but…" she chewed her lip.

Bucky resisted the urge to pull out his hair in frustration. She'd done this before. Didn't she learn the first time? "Are you too high to get down?"

Alice sighed deeply. "I am, in fact, too high. One of my footholds broke off."

"It's hard to believe you were entrusted with correcting the flow of history. Come on, jump; I'll catch you."

"Promise?" The rising pitch of her voice betrayed her fear, though she rarely tried to hide it anyway.

Bucky held his arms open and tried to look as earnest as possible. She slid off the tree branch, needing no further encouragement to succumb to the will of gravity, and fell easily into his open arms. It felt about as significant as catching a pillow to him, as he could still remember the force of trying to lift a steel beam off of his legs when trapped in the crumbling SHIELD helicarrier. However, he couldn't pass up on the opportunity to poke a little fun at Alice. "Oof," he grunted.

"_Oof?_" Alice cried out in dismay. "What do you mean _'oof'!_?"

Bucky leaned forward like her weight might break his back. "Nothing, can I put you down?"

"_No!_" she cried, still offended. "You have to carry me forever!"

"Oh, Doll - I would if I could." He dropped the you're-too-heavy act and kissed her on the nose before brushing his beard against her cheek. She shrieked in protest and tried to squirm out of his grip.

He set her down only once they reached the concrete patio and she crouched down to pick up her shoes. "So how's it going in there?"

"Slowly." Bucky rubbed at his face. "Steve's worried."

She glanced at him as she pulled her shoes on. "Should I be worried?"

Bucky didn't answer. He wasn't sure yet, and for everyone's peace of mind he wanted to be sure. He had a sneaking suspicion that Merced had more in mind than just informing them about Taskmaster's particular talents.

Alice picked up on the pointed silence and took a cleansing breath. "I'm going to make some tea. You want some tea?" She smiled, clearly forcing ease into her tone and her face for his benefit. _It's okay_, the action said,_ I understand._

Bucky returned her smile as much as he could. "Sure."

"Break's over, Barnes," Natalia called across the room as they entered. "_Kiss your nanny goodbye; we've got work to do," _she added in Russian.

"_Mind your own fucking business, Romanova," _he snarled to the Spider. The Russian seemed unbothered by his tone.

Alice made a disapproving face. "I really need to learn Russian. What kind of nonsense language uses numbers as letters?"

"You do not need to learn Russian." Bucky pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. "Try to stay out of trees this afternoon."

Alice rubbed at her face, her silent complaint that his bear was definitely growing out of control. "I could make flower crowns or daisy chains instead. That's about all I'm good for at the moment."

Too quick to dismiss her worth; it bothered Bucky. "No, you-"

"_Move your ass, Barnes!" _Natalia yelled, still in Russian.

"_Are you burning the building down? No? Give me a minute!" _Bucky yelled back. "Sorry," he apologized to Alice.

Alice squeezed his hand and let go. "You should go, I think."

"Alice," he tugged lightly on the end of her braid to get her attention. Her hair was only half-braided already; long strands falling into her face for her to push or irritably blow out of the way. "You're good for so much more than flower crowns."

She flushed slightly. "Aww, Buck… that was so sweet I might throw up."

She did look a little unsteady, now that she mentioned it. It could be hard to tell through her mutation, but something was definitely off. "I'll find you after," he promised. "No trees."

"No trees," Alice agreed.

They parted as she headed towards the kitchen - hopefully to clean up some of her baking disasters - and he towards the lion's den. _A room full of lions and no one to eat - will they turn on each other or just starve to death?_

Romanova fell into step beside him, her grin sly. _"So when's the wedding?" _she asked, still sticking to Russian.

Ever the information-collector, always looking and probing for sources of weakness to exploit. This also didn't feel quite the same as before; possibly just a friendly curiosity hiding an olive branch. _"Right after your funeral. I can arrange that if you like."_

Natalia chuckled and didn't comment as Bucky held the door open for her. "I like her. She's not too nice."

"Who?" Rhodes asked, swiveling around in his chair.

"I'd guess the getaway-driver-slash-house-elf that's been making terrible coffee the last few mornings." Tony cruised into the conference room, evidently unbothered that he'd arrived last and latest.

Merced seemed confused, glancing up from some papers she'd collected. "You brought a getaway driver with you?"

Bucky couldn't physically force his body not to blush, but he certainly tried. "She's not really a getaway driver."

"But she plays one on TV," Wilson added.

Bucky cleared his throat, crossing his arms to prevent any nervous fidgeting as Merced turned an even more confused look his way. "Alice is… we were living together when Masters found me."

Wilson groaned in frustration. "_Girlfriend_, Barnes; the word you're looking for is _girlfriend_."

Now Merced seemed alarmed. "Someone was _with you?_"

Wilson made a noise of confirmation before Bucky could interject. "She's _still_ with him - don't see what she sees, honestly."

The former agent gaped, openly, unable to hide the shock and perplexing alarm written on her face. "Is that important?" Bucky asked, concerned. His question seemed to help her realize her expressions were plainly evident.

She blinked, shook her head, and continued to blink rapidly. "No, not really, I'm just… surprised." The concern and shock reigned in, she smoothed down the loose wrinkles in her uniform in self-composure.

Rhodes chimed in. "You're not the only one. Barnes is about as charming as a kick to the face."

Mercedes shook her head again. "I'm sorry, when exactly did you two-"

In a jolt of most inopportune convenience, Alice walked into the conference room with a large tea tray laden with steaming mugs. "Sorry to interrupt, but I brought tea."

Bucky sprang to his feet, already reaching to help her balance the tray and set it safely on the table. She wasn't the most well-balanced girl he'd ever met, and that would make for an awful lot of burns if she tripped. She shot him a beaming smile of thanks, returning greetings as she handed out mugs to all those reaching hands, ready for the steadying brew.

"Thanks, Al," he said softly.

"Mercedes Merced," the agent greeted, taking a cup and offering a hand to shake.

She patted her hands on her sweater to clean off before shaking her hand. "Alice Sigynsdottir, nice to meet you."

Merced lifted the mug that she had yet to drink from. "Thank you for the tea."

Alice beamed warmly. "It's the least I could do. There's cream and sugar, and a pot of honey, if you like that sort of thing." Alice pointed out the caddy of sweeteners left on the tray with the spare tea. Vision stared at it curiously, and back at the mug he'd accepted. Bucky wondered if he intended to try it. Then he wondered if that might short out the automaton.

Merced watched Alice leave the room. "If you don't mind me asking-"

Stark reached over the table to grab a cup that Alice had left just out of his comfortable reaching distance. "Cute and cuddly Furby package? The demonic robotic parts are on the inside."

Steve cleared his throat. "Let's focus, shall we? I think we'd all do well to remember that Masters is one of us, even if he doesn't remember it. So how do we help?"

"He needs to be reset," Merced said.

The word still made Bucky twitch. "After a reset, how can you be sure he'll call in again?"

Merced toyed with her mug's handle. "He always does, and I've repaired HYDRA's redirect hack. This will work."

"How do you know it won't happen again?" Stark asked sharply.

"I'm sure," the agent defended.

Stark did not appear convinced. "I'll have FRIDAY poke around, just to be sure."

Merced snapped back. "That's not necessary. I've been doing this a long time, Stark; I know what I'm doing."

Stark snorted in derision. "Clearly you don't; because you managed to get the tail end of a _payphone _connection hacked by a bunch of toddlers with glorified Fisher-Price toys."

"I have fixed it, Stark. They won't be able to access it again. I know Masters will call in because he always follows a predictable pattern that's governed entirely by muscle memory." Merced took a sip of tea and made a disgusted face. "Pass the sugar, would you?"

"Doesn't work as well with sugar," Bucky said softly.

"I'm sorry?" Merced asked, as if she hadn't heard him.

Steve pushed the sweetener caddy in her direction but clarified. "The tea - it's meant to be calming, but it doesn't work as well if you add sugar." Natalia gave him a scrutinizing look. "What? It's the same stuff she used to make before. I had to hear it a hundred times - it stuck."

Merced lumped sugar into her cup, stirring gently with a spoon so that the metallic tinkle didn't distract. "Masters can only be reset by absorbing new information, by an opponent strong enough to force him to absorb the information to survive. Unfortunately," she paused, "all of you have well-documented styles. You are constantly on the news and other media. However," she slowly turned her attention to Bucky. "You are HYDRA's greatest ghost."

"We already fought," Bucky said slowly, not following.

"Yes," Mercedes confirmed. "But not... _all_ of you."

"_No,_" Steve instantly debated. "Out of the question."

Mercedes softened her voice in a placating gesture. "I've given it a lot of thought - we already know there's a target on Barnes, so it's not difficult to broadcast his location once we're set. From there, it's just a matter of aligning circumstances to put Barnes at an advantage in the fight, and then everything flows through the normal paths from there."

Stark was also starting to wind up into a fury. "You won't be able to control what Barnes does; he could go off on-"

Mercedes seemed preternaturally calm. "On the contrary - the Winter Soldier responds to commands very well."

_Bucky, the Soldier, is there even a difference? _The crowd could argue until everyone there turned blue in the face, but the question would go unanswered. Bucky knew the answer. There was no summoning of this external entity, some monster they could bring forth and put away on a whim just to execute orders. He would be in there, confused and afraid, hoping against hope for some ray of light in a dark world to show him the path to answers.

He couldn't avoid the thought, though, that if he rejected the idea of being that monster again he would be leaving another man-made-monster to fumble alone in that darkness; knowing he could help but refusing out of fear would not make him a better man, it would make him a coward.

"We have to," Bucky croaked, interrupting the level of debate that had escalated around him.

Natalia disagreed. "You just got your head back, and you want to undo all of it?"

"It does seem counterintuitive," Vision agreed, "but it seems the only course of action to prevent further suffering."

"We do what's necessary to protect people," Maximoff hummed.

No one seemed ready to commit to the idea. _Let's go make a monster_. _We can absolutely control this unstable hundred-year-old assassin. Gosh gee golly, this is the best plan ever!_

"You'll need a Commander," Merced declared, already mentally several steps into the process.

"Steve," Bucky insisted. "You're the best option."

Steve didn't seem surprised to be Bucky's first option, but appropriately hesitant. "Agent Merced has experience in this sort of thing, Buck…"

Bucky shook his head. "It should be you, Steve."

Steve looked around the room for some kind of reassurance or debate. Wilson grinned. "This is about the biggest trust fall you can take, man. I'd want it to be my brother, too."

"I think this whole plan is insane," Rhodes added.

Vision smiled, the motion almost nearly human but still missing the mark. "I don't think you're going to get out of this one, Captain."

"I guess not." Steve sighed in resignation. "Well, we've got work to do." Steve stood and the room followed.

Relieved, Bucky enjoyed a steadying breath to ease the uncertainty growing in his gut. He wanted to feel good about this decision and the plan they'd made. He could also feel the far-off thrumming of thunder against his senses, signaling a distant storm whose effects were only just beginning.

Romanova shot him a meaningful glance as she passed his chair, but dropped it as she joined Merced, offering to show the agent around and get her bearings. They moved in similar ways and had such a similar haunted look in their eyes, it made sense they would be companionable together.

"How are the new recruits doing?" Bucky asked Steve, doing his best to remember a time when he and Steve had talked easily together. _Conversation shouldn't be so hard, _he thought_, I talk to Alice all the time_.

Steve seemed pleased Bucky was trying, and that was enough. "They're green, but we'll get them there. You should stop by a class sometime- I'm sure you've got lots to offer."

"_Ten Ways to Keep From Losing Your Mind; Meditations From an Ex-Assassin." _The joke flew out of his mouth before he could stop it; far more like something he would say to Alice over breakfast than anything meant for a slowly mending friendship.

But Steve laughed, and it sounded like he hadn't been ready for it but it came out anyway; it had a tone of relief mixed in. "You joke, but things like that are actually helpful." Steve clapped him on the shoulder. "You really should stop by."

Bucky nodded once. "I'll think about it." He liked the idea of passing on a little information - a few tips and tricks and pearls of wisdom to the next generation. He liked the idea of some use coming from his suffering.

Steve nodded, grinning too much like his younger self. He clapped Bucky on the shoulder, very carefully picking the right over the left. He looked like he wanted to continue the conversation, to get into the deep and prying questions, to start a friendship up again from the moment it left off. But the strained tension in the corner of his eyes betrayed the knowledge that he couldn't force it to be the same again.

Bucky wanted to give Steve that friendship, he really did. He wanted to talk about the good times, and tell him all about the life he'd learned to enjoy again, and about how damned _cold_ it could get in Iceland, but there was no ignoring the parts in-between. The pain. Death. Murder. He didn't know how to skip through those parts easily to get to the reward at the end, so they both continued to stand awkwardly at the starting line.

"I've got to-" "I should-"

Steve and Bucky accidentally spoke over each other, stopped, and shared a tired grin. "I'll see you around, Steve," Bucky gave a tired and lazy salute. He turned to go find Alice, to find that steadying force in the storm of emotions all that argument had dredged up and missed some of the tension release from Steve's face; a relief, and hope.

Bucky followed the traces of Alice again, corrected from before. She'd cleaned the kitchen, scrubbing down the floured surfaces that one might not ordinarily use flour on. She'd rearranged the magazines, now by cover article author instead of by color. She'd moved the plants again, following the drifting paths of light to get every drop of sunshine.

He followed the path of Alice to the same concrete patio where she had yet again abandoned her shoes at the edge of the grass. He hadn't known Alice to be so obsessed with being barefoot in the grass, but Bucky supposed there had been no real way to know; it was far too dangerous to wander around barefoot in a battlefield, and Iceland hadn't offered much beyond coarse rock and rocky hills to wander on. This return to her old stomping grounds afforded her the luxury again, and he didn't have the heart to deny her.

As he thought about going out into the fields to track her down - hopefully not up a tree - she rounded the corner of the building, following the treeline.

"So what's your plan?" Bucky jerked as a voice chimed beside him. His head snapped to the side, glaring at a rather smug-looking Wilson; he looked very pleased that he'd been able to sneak up on a super-soldier.

"I don't need a _plan_," Bucky retorted.

"I'd make a plan," Wilson encouraged in a sing-song voice. "Al is a lot of things but, uh… she's scary when she's mad."

Bucky watched as she wandered across the edge of the far field, her hands drifting among the wild plants that grew at the edge of the lawn. Wild rivers of gold slipped over her shoulders as she bent over, forcing her to tilt her head in order to be able to see well enough to judge which stems to pick, having finally given up on attempting to tame her hair for the day. All soft lines and gentle hands, this Alice didn't look like she had the power to say a cross word, let alone frighten men.

"I've seen her mad before," Bucky said. "I'll be fine."

Alice, still far in the distance, yanked her hand back from the stem of a plant. She looked at her hand, then looked back at the plant. All the sunshine and softness withered away from her posture. She raised a vindictive foot and stomped on the offending bug that must have bitten her.

Wilson patted him on the shoulder, taking his leave as Alice finally noticed them from across the lawn and waved. "I'll bring nice flowers to your funeral."

She strolled towards the concrete patio, one hand wrapped around her collection of plants, the other rolling mint leaves between her fingers before popping them into her mouth to chew like gum.

Barring all the elements so purely modern - her oversized shirts and borrowed leggings, long and wild hair that had clearly not seen a hairpin since 1944 - she could easily be walking out of a springtime field in Lithuania, or Italy, or Austria; headed back to the Commandos' base camp in the heat of war. He almost expected her to tuck her lip and whistle, and for a large gray warhorse to answer with a whinny.

She hadn't changed at all; not in any of the ways that mattered. Still the constant and inconstant wave of behavior and balance, like an ocean tide that sometimes ignored all the charts and maps and just flowed over an island; swallowing it whole. To read her mild unease in the tension of her shoulders, the uncertainty in the dip of her head and the tilt of a hand as she caught a ray of sunshine in her palm, it made his heart ache to know he knew exactly what he would read in her eyes and face and body when he broke the news. He would know exactly how much it hurt.

She slipped her feet into abandoned shoes as she approached, shuffling along to try to get a snug fit. She presented to him her bouquet of weeds. "Hey, Buck - look what I found! Chickweed, some mugwort, I-"

Bucky drew her into a tight embrace without saying a word. If he held her close enough, screwed his eyes shut and prayed hard enough to a God that had already abandoned him once, maybe he could live forever just in that moment. Maybe he wouldn't have to go through with it after all; God would decide they'd suffered enough.

He rocked slightly in place, pressing his cheek against the top of her head and just reveling in the sunshine-warmed clover-field smell of her, the weight of her as she dropped the collection of plants and wrapped her arms around his waist in return, and the chime of her voice as she asked him repeatedly what was wrong.

He had to let go, eventually. He had to let go of his last precious guaranteed moment and see the confusion and fear in her eyes, as she grew to realize that something, _something_, must be happening. There were flowers closing in her eyes, leaves shriveling, stems shrinking into the dark.

"Bucky, I think you need to talk to me now." Alice searched his face, a worried wrinkle developing between her eyebrows. Too late for prayers, he could see the hurt grow there; a pain stemming from the agony of uncertainty.

Too late for prayers; no God would answer him.

* * *

**A/N:** I have plot-locked my outline. I've written in all of my plot points, and now it's just down to writing the thing and getting everyone's characterization right. Much of the delays tend to come from the "where the hell is this going?" problem.

Also, in case it's not imminently clear, yes: Bucky knew Nat back when she was a Spider. It's nbd, and won't really be a plot point beyond him thinking of her related to her Russian name (Natalia Romanova).

I am also weirdly obsessed with chapter titles, and if you've been a reader for a while you know by now that the meaning is not always straightforward but helps me to drive the mood of the writing. As the world's most Marvel Studios type "movie title release" semi-spoiler, here is my personal favorite of all of the chapter titles I think I've ever written and is one of our upcoming chapters: **War of the Angels**.

Question - since we are plot-locked, would you be interested in seeing all the future titles of chapters in the next author's note? Or do you like the surprise of not knowing how much of the story is left?

Thanks to my reviewers! Momochan77, TikiKiki, LisaPark, SomebodyWhoCares, SabakyNoGaara426, PistolHattersButtercup, TimeLordsRule, SunnySides, beeezzz, Idontknoworcareanymore, huffle-bibin, AquaBluey, LoveFiction2019, IvoryDarkWolf, Lucy Jacob, imeerkat, nerdalertwarning, and Sanguinary Tide!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	26. After the Dream

Whatever coffee was left over in the pot had gone cold by the time Steve got to it. It should have been a simple matter of making another cup, but Stark's machines weren't so simple as to include a "one more cup, please" button along the front. Resigned to microwaved coffee, Steve poured the sludge into his nearly-empty mug and gave it a half-hearted stir before setting it in the microwave and punching a series of buttons he hoped produced drinkable coffee.

He stared at the mug through the dotted glass as it spun lazily on a nearly-centered axis and the machine hummed in action. Slightly off-kilter, the turntable bounced at the height of a revolution and rattled the porcelain slightly, producing a _klink!_ of ceramic every five seconds or so.

Slightly off-center, jarred at the height of motion, trying to make do with the leftovers of reason and call it a plan. Steve could relate. He could feel the tension of the day at the backs of his eyes and the palms of his hands; sore from clenching in frustration. He ran through the arguments and ideas over and over in his head, trying to come up with some better plan that didn't involve torturing his friend. Agent Merced seemed to sure, so certain; her experience with command over assets like this vastly outweighed his own and he should have felt confident with her recommendations, but Steve couldn't just think of his friend as an _Asset_.

The microwaved chirped, informing Steve that his best attempt at coffee was ready. The door bounced open and Steve carefully picked up the mug by the handle, the radiating heat from the body warming his knuckles.

It didn't seem like Agent Merced thought of her husband as a derelict SHIELD tool either. She referred to Taskmaster as 'Masters' and sometimes 'my husband' as if to remind all of them that a confused person still lingered under the skull mask he wore. Steve didn't need reminding. He remembered all too well finding a face underneath a black mask and exposing the recognition and emotion there.

Steve tested his coffee and scowled. While quite hot, the flavor hadn't developed well in the trip through the microwave. He considered sweetening it to mask the harsh and bitter core, but the thought stayed only a brief consideration before a roar of rage cut through the amiable silence of the compound.

A door slammed; one on soft-close magnetic latches that was never meant to be slammed. Glass cracked. Pounding footsteps. _"Steven Grant Rogers you get your ass out here!" _Alice's voice bellowed.

Steve had been hoping Alice might be in support of their efforts to rescue Masters from HYDRA control. Evidently not. Steve abandoned his coffee in the kitchen and set off to intercept Alice before she broke any more doors in her hunt. Following the sounds of a heated argument, Steve found them in the lounge, Alice gesticulating wildly at a somber and silent Bucky, her back turned to the kitchen and Steve.

"You worked too hard for this - how could you just give it up? Just like that?" Confusion and anger clawed at her voice, throttling the calmer tones Steve always expected of the battle-tempered nurse.

Steve tried to interject, to give some reason that might explain the suffering they were risking. "Alice, we all agreed this was the best way-" She whirled, and the fire in her eyes had burnt away the calm compassion she'd displayed the last few days around the compound, leaving only a fury to match a vengeful angel.

Steve lurched back as Alice lunged for his face but only snagged at his collar, her fingernails ripping off the top button on his shirt as Bucky grabbed at her arms. "_Calm down!"_

"_How could you?_" she accused Steve, trying to climb out of Bucky's grasp her hands skidded for purchase against his steel arm, fingernails catching and ripping. "We trusted you; _I_ trusted you! How could you force this on him?!"

"We're not forcing anything on anyone," Steve defended.

Bucky backed him up, still holding tight to the compact rage-machine. "I agreed to it, Al; they _asked_. I said yes." As swiftly as she'd turned to rage, her expression broke into one of utter despair; eyebrows rising at the middle and mouth falling open into a wordless sob. Her hands flew to her face, revealing she'd broken off fingernails fighting against Bucky's arm. Though the rough wound had already healed, the blood had yet to dry on her hands.

"Alice?" Steve asked as she made a series of distressing sounds, but tendons in the backs of her hands flexed into taught lines at the sound of his voice.

"Everything ok down there?" the call came from the balcony above; concern at the shouting having drawn Natasha. A glance up at the voices showed that a curious Merced had followed. If the yelling continued it would only draw more attention to what should be a private outburst.

Despite a warning shake of Bucky's head, Steve wanted to try to smooth out the situation and moved to put a hand on Alice's shoulder. The gentle squeeze he intended had soothed so many rough conversations in her farm office about the painful past. "Maybe you should-" Steve snatched his hand back as Alice snapped at his hand with her _teeth_ like a feral animal, her hands grasping at Bucky's restraint in another attempt to lunge at him.

"_Don't you fucking touch me_," she snarled. "You're lucky I don't skin you alive for the shit you're trying to pull!"

"We'll talk about this tomorrow,' he said.

"Why? So you can come up with some better bullshit justification to try and shove down my throat?" Alice roared.

"Hey! What's all the yelling about?" Sam called from down the hall.

"_Vous êtes le vrai monstre ici,_" Alice spat.

"That's enough!" Bucky yelled.

_You're the real monster here. _Her accusation struck at his face even as her teeth clicked shut around further insults. Steve remembered the viciousness with which Alice defended her own.

Over drinks in London, Dum Dum had relayed his suspicions that Alice had poisoned an overseer in Azzano to protect the 107th. The story had come with a chuckle during the somber toast to their fallen friends; _to the hellcat and her tom. _It was just something else to be on the receiving end of that rage. She struck out with the power of an avenging angel - fire and blood and fury. Steve wondered if Dum Dum had known, or suspected, the power of her rage when he named her _the Angel of Azzano._

"Get some rest," he said softly, hoping his measured tone might remind her that he wasn't an enemy; spoken not like a Captain giving an order, but just a suggestion from a friend.

Bucky all but hauled her away. The bitter spite of Alice's emotion overwhelmed his senses like a sudden changing of the wind bringing smoke from the fire into your eyes. It burned deeply, swirling inside his chest and scorching his lungs. Steve sighed like the broad motion might ease the tightness trying to crawl up the back of his neck.

The empty chasm of space between Steve and the walls of the compound had filled with the violent hum of Alice's anger, wrapping around the questions and indecision and worries that had started to fly like strange birds. Her bitterness caught and strangled them, forcing them into Steve's hands with wordless purpose so he could no longer ignore them.

Steve became aware of someone approaching and turned with an apologetic grimace. "It's a stressful time for everyone," he explained to Merced, who immediately waved off the weak attempt. Natasha seemed to have been driven away by the tense conflict, but Merced had stayed.

"You're doing the right thing," Merced encouraged. She tilted her head towards the kitchen, and Steve followed.

"You sound sure of that," Steve said.

"I have to be." Merced crossed her arms. "As a solo agent I don't have the luxury of an audience to witness an emotional reaction, so I've spent the last ten years perfecting my work."

"We have to be sure that this is going to work; we need plans for every possible complication."

"I've always got a plan, Captain." She punched a series of buttons on the coffee maker and slid a mug into place. The machine grumbled and groaned, then dribbled out a stream of hot coffee. "I'm sorry; did you want a fresh cup?"

"I've got some, thanks." Steve glanced around the kitchen, looking for said cup.

Merced opened a few cabinets before procuring sugar and creamer. "You've got all the great toys up here. It's enough to make a girl think of changing her profession."

"You're always welcome here, Mercedes," Steve reminded her.

Her lips twitched at the side in a wry grin. "Thanks, but my methods sometimes require… working outside the box."

"We're no strangers to unusual methods here."

She tilted her head and gave him an exasperatedly patient look. "That's not the kind of box I'm talking about, Captain."

Steve's brow furrowed as he tried to understand, then relaxed as he caught on to her meaning. "Oh. I see. I'm sorry." Merced had mentioned before that she had to work outside the law; eliminating the darker demons that threatened the world before they even popped up on the radar.

"Please don't feel sorry; it's necessary work, and I'm happy to do it." She stirred the spoon slowly, avoiding scraping the interior of the mug and preserving the evening's delicate silence. "The world shouldn't have to count on you to make all of the tough calls."

"If you don't mind me asking-" he started, propriety cutting off the end.

"I probably will, but ask anyway."

The question had been bothering him. "If you knew Masters had been compromised by HYDRA, why didn't you call in?"

Mercedes stopped stirring, resting the spoon against the side of her mug. She laughed; a short cough like one of surprise. "Because until Natasha called me, I honestly forgot."

"You forgot about SHIELD?"

"SHIELD is in the process of being reborn, Captain. You're all so fragile out here; so vulnerable to influence and attack."

"We're in this together," Steve reminded. "And we're grateful for your experience."

"It's late," Merced replied. "I'll start investigating possible contact locations for the mission tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll have some sites for us to scope out within the week."

"Thank you."

She nodded. "Get some rest."

By the time Steve remembered he had coffee waiting it had gone cold again.

* * *

Steve cringed into his pillow as the lights in his bedroom brightened steadily, forcing him out of what hadn't been a very pleasant dream. _"Good morning, Captain Rogers. You have a class in an hour."_

"Thanks, FRIDAY," Steve grumbled, rolling out of bed to get dressed.

"_Would you like for me to make sure there's still coffee after your morning run?"_ the AI offered as he laced up his shoes.

"Only if it's no trouble," Steve replied.

"_Of course."_ It almost sounded like the AI was mocking him. Too much of Tony in those robots.

The broad path that looped around the upstate compound drifted in and out of tree-cover, in and out of the darkness as night slowly gave way to early morning. Cool breaths faded into sunbeams and birds called out warnings as the old soldier shot past.

So close to peace, the steadying repetition of the beating of his shoes on the ground, the swing of his arms, Steve's mind would drift. Alone on the trail, mind wandering as his course stayed true.

The hum of machinery in the distance, growing louder as the recruits warmed up jets for morning practice. _I gotta put her in the water_.

Cold breaths in his chest, air rushing past his face. _If I wait any longer people are gonna die._

His hands tightening, gripping at nothing. _This is my choice_.

"_Twenty minutes until class, Captain."_ Steve nearly stumbled as the AI cut into his thoughts through the earbud.

Just enough time for a shower, cranked as high as hot could go for a few minutes, then turned down to something lukewarm as Steve felt a pang of shame that carried over from his 'vintage counter-hedonism', as Tony called it. Steve just couldn't shake the guilt over using so much hot water when he remembered how damnably expensive it had been when he was younger.

The shower, a shave, then black coffee, head to class. A huge classroom full of eager volunteers, looking to serve their county in the only way they knew how… all too familiar. Sometimes it would hit him in the middle of class; a sense of deja vu that had no place in this era. That kind of earnest honor had been lost, he thought. He should have been happy to see it in so many, but the prospect filled him with dread.

Memories of faces - the same eagerness, the same honor, the same humor - would ghost through the crowd. He could almost smell the cigarette smoke, almost feel the mud beneath his boots as he stood.

_There is a tavern in the town, in the town_, the raucous men would sing, _and there my true love sits him down, sits him down, and drinks his wine as merry as can be, and never, never thinks of me._

Bodies lying in the mud and blood running in rivers. Explosions, screams, cries in the night. _And now I see him nevermore, nevermore; he never knocks upon my door, on my door; oh, woe is me; he pinned a little note, and these were all the words he wrote._

Letters of condolence signed by lamplight. A hesitant voice singing at the campfire, hands wrapped tightly around a rifle, singing only to comfort the fallen. _Oh, dig my grave both wide and deep, wide and deep; put tombstones at my head and feet, head and feet and on my breast you may carve a turtle dove, to signify I died for love._

Steve had to blink a few times to be certain he wasn't just seeing an imagined ghost as he turned his last corner and approached the lecture hall. But no, this ghost looked over at him and grinned wearily as he approached.

"Hey," Bucky greeted. "You mentioned I should come talk." He stood tall - more confident in himself and his position in the world He wasn't showing off the arm but wasn't exactly trying to hide it either; the sleeves on both arms had been rolled up to the elbow.

Students passed behind Bucky to slip into the classroom, swiftly erupting into hushed conversation as soon as they were through the threshold.

"You sure?" Steve asked.

"Yeah. It'll be fun." Bucky glanced into the room. He grinned, but the lines around his eyes tightened. "Can't be any worse than hiking up that damn mountain in Switzerland."

Steve's chest tightened and he used a slightly forced chuckle to loosen it. "Alright then, let's do this."

Bucky followed Steve into the lecture hall but lingered politely near the door as Steve set his papers down on the lectern. "Good morning, everyone."

"_Good morning_," the class chorused in reply, some over the rim of a coffee mug.

"I hope you won't be too disappointed when I tell you we're deviating from today's lesson plan on the history of the Strategic Scientific Reserve. Sergeant Barnes has kindly agreed to come to speak with all of you. I hope you'll show him that we're not all just a group of hooligans."

The class chuckled. With a nod and a brief gesture to the lectern, Steve yielded the floor to Bucky, finding a comfortable observing distance almost near the door.

"Hello." Bucky waved with his steel arm and whispers broke out instantly. "Maybe we should start with the questions?" Hands shot up seconds later and Bucky's face broke into an amused smirk. "Yes; I am the assassin that tried to kill Director Fury and dropped Captain Rogers out of a helicarrier. Any _other_ questions?"

A lot of hands went down. Some stayed up. Bucky called on a recruit close to the front of the hall. "How long were you working for HYDRA?" they asked.

Steve cringed internally; so much for tact. But Bucky seemed to take it in stride. He shifted in place and tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. "I didn't _work_ for them, but I understand your question. Captain Rogers and I served in the Army together, and I was captured shortly before the Captain went into the ice; so about seventy years."

The questions continued. "How did they, you know, _make_ you?"

Bucky nodded slowly. "Torture, mostly. If it's applied in the right way, pain can make you very receptive to suggestion. Then it's a matter of making it easily repeatable. The brain likes routine, so by removing one routine and replacing it with the new guidelines you work with the brain instead of against it."

He spoke so calmly, like explaining how to disassemble a rifle for cleaning. "I won't lie to you - mental manipulation, brainwashing, torture; it's the worst thing that can possibly happen to you. There's no good way to check out or dull down what's going on. The best you can do is just to survive with something that resembles your mind."

A quieter, more thoughtful question came from a girl on his far left: "So… there's nothing you can do?"

Bucky shook his head. "I'm not saying that - sure, some people are just naturally stubborn assholes when it comes to manipulation, But," he paused as a laugh rose from the crowd. Bucky grinned, appreciating the laugh that cleared some of the tension of the room. "The things and the people that are important to you - the deep, personal things that are just a part of you - those can't be erased. You can't just remove your… your reason for living. They'll try to paste over it - to give you new reasons, new directions, and missions, but it's still there."

Sweeping the room with his eyes, Bucky seemed to be speaking directly and personally to each recruit. "Knowing what's real, what has that deep connection to who you are - that'll tell you the truth. Lies and misdirection just don't have the depth of sensation that's tied to what's important to you; it's just… flat - limited to one or two sensations, and one of them is usually pain. A good grounding memory will lead you back to yourself, rather than a dead end."

Students were taking notes now. A hesitant hand raised. "How did you do it? Get back, I mean."

Bucky set his hands on the lectern, tapping his fingers thoughtfully. "Alright, this is going to get a little personal for a minute; so let's just keep it between the hundred or so of you."

A chuckle spread through the room.

Bucky took a moment to pause, a long one, and Steve was about to ask if he was alright when he finally spoke. "Of all the things that HYDRA took from me, they couldn't erase everything without turning me into a useless brain-dead vegetable. They left things that make tactical sense, which included coping mechanisms for stress. My mind's coping mechanism is to remind me of a woman's voice, just telling me to breathe. I knew that her voice is important to me, though I didn't always remember why."

Bucky held up one finger - one steel finger. "That one thing, before all others, gave me questions." He let the hand drop. "Questions are the enemy in brainwashing - they won't want you following the rabbit hole that a question brings up, so you'd better dig a lot of them to make sure you fall in at least one."

The scratching of dozens of pens on paper paused as the trainees tried to digest the information. "I don't understand," muttered someone quietly, but it echoed loudly in the room.

Bucky made a vaguely frustrated face as he tried to rephrase the concept. "Maybe not a rabbit hole, but… seeds? When that first flash of memory started to sprout, I could watch it grow. The more senses it tied to, the more I could remember." He ticked them off on his fingers. "_One. _I remember the voice. I can hear it, and it calms me. _Two. _I realize the voice reminds me of other sensations I felt other times I've heard it, like the feeling of snow or the smell of coffee. Those remind me of other sensations, and the rabbit hole gets deeper. If I can count off all five senses I know it's a person or a memory that's close to me." He smiled fondly. "My girl taught me that."

A whole lot of hands shot up. In their excitement, a lot of the trainees spoke in quick succession. "Did HYDRA torture her too?" "Is she that barefoot blonde lady on the grounds?" "Is she really that nurse from 1944?"

Bucky looked like he didn't know what to do about that, and glanced at Steve for guidance.

"Let's get back on topic," Steve suggested.

A more relevant question was shouted from the far back; "How many 'seeds' of memories do you have?"

Bucky laughed. "A lot! And you all probably have a lot more already planted than you think. The more connections you make, the more you enjoy and appreciate the world and the people in it, the harder it is to break you down and make you feel alone. Remember that whatever your petty differences and friendly competition may be you are all in this together. It's up to you, but you don't have to do it alone."

The note-taking resumed. "If you don't think you have a good grounding, then today you've gotta start planting. Maybe you start on your own, and I know it's hard, _God_ knows it's hard. Really look around and decide what's important to you - what are those things that, without them, you'd have no reason to wake up? Maybe that's a person, or maybe it's just… the sun coming up in the morning. Start with one, then plant another. Turn the ground up; find every worm and empty patch in that dirt. Never give the people that want to hurt you even an inch of untouched soil to bury you."

The note-takers caught up, and a few pens were set down as they absorbed the idea. Bucky watched them, and Steve wished at that moment that he knew what his friend was thinking. Was he overcome with memory, as Steve often was? Did he see the past and all the mistakes he had ever made or was he looking to the future?

A hand in about the center of the room went up. "Yes?" Bucky called on him.

"I just want to…" The recruit gulped, stood, squared his shoulders, and saluted. "Thank you for your service, Sir."

Bucky hesitated. "That's really not-" Chairs scraped, pens were dropped, and jackets straightened as the entire class, all one hundred and seven of them, stood.

"_Thank you for your service," _they chorused as one. They saluted; some sloppily, as these recruits had likely never seen military service, but the attempt was made.

Bucky's head sagged as he looked down at the ground. His hands, still braced on the lectern, clenched tightly around the edges for support. Steve stepped forward, hand already out to try to help, but Bucky moved again. His back straightened, jaw lifted, and snapped a firm and practiced salute in return.

Steve relaxed as they broke as one. The students returned to their seats and there was the usual grinding of chair legs being pulled back in, and a shuffle of papers. The tension of the room had broken, leaving a nervous but still light energy in the air; an enthusiasm or frenetic peace.

"Ok," Bucky grinned. "Now that we've gotten the burning questions out of the way, let's talk technique."

It was something else to watch Bucky teach. He made a perfect balance of funny side-notes and contextual stories while giving out specific and useful details. He didn't shy away from the gritty and shameful parts of work they might be asked to do as agents but avoided being gruesome about it.

Steve was stunned at the vast knowledge Bucky seemed to have absorbed during his time under HYDRA's control. He could talk about resisting manipulation, subverting and sabotaging equipment in an undetectable manner, just as easily as he could talk about methods for quickly learning a new language. Effective, informative, and entertaining.

Steve glanced at his watch after a time and took a double-take. He clapped his hands to get the room's attention, interrupting Bucky mid-sketch on the whiteboard behind him on the details of how to avoid detection while waiting for friendly extraction. "I'm sorry, everyone, but we're way over time here and some of you late for your afternoon training with Romanoff."

Those late recruits scrambled to shove their notes into bags and fled the room. "But let's thank Sergeant Barnes for his insight, and maybe he'll think about coming back," Steve added, joining the room in polite applause.

A few of the students insisted on shaking Bucky's hands as they left the room, both apologizing for leaving so quickly and asking repeatedly if he would be coming back to teach them more before their final training day. Bucky promised to think about it, and that seemed to satisfy most of them.

Steve wandered through the room, picking up the bits of discarded paper and forgotten pens to clean up after the class. "Thanks for coming out," he said.

A few rows down, doing the same methodical cleaning of the room, Bucky shrugged. "Needed to talk to you anyway." He carried the discarded classroom waste to the bin by the door, then took out a small notebook from his back pocket as Steve approached to do the same.

"What's that?" Steve asked. Bucky held the notebook tightly, the metal of his hand creaking slightly.

He opened it with shaky hands, trying not to look too long at the page. "Here," he said, handing Steve the book. "You'll need to practice pronouncing the activation sequence. It's in Russian but there's nothing I can do about that. I've written down a few basics for you; terms, commands, things like that. A few rules, too."

"Thanks," Steve mumbled, putting the notebook away quickly. "I, uh…" he trailed off.

"Yeah," Bucky agreed with a forced smile. "This is pretty fucked up."

"More than the time I made you go to that art class?" Steve asked slyly.

The smile slipped some. "I don't remember that one."

"Hey," Steve covered immediately, "I don't think you would want to - the model was this huge old man, hairy all over, even-" he gestured widely.

"Oh god!" Bucky suddenly yelled, putting his hands over his eyes, "Now I remember and I don't want to! Why would you make me remember that?!"

"It was for art!" Steve defended.

They laughed together, remembering the strangely confident nude old man who'd posed for a little community art class so many decades ago; Steve at the time able to detach from the visual and focus on drawing, Bucky completely horrified.

"Do you think we should-" Steve started. "It's good to have you back," he finished. "I hope that after everything is settled, you decide to stay."

Bucky put his hands in his pockets and avoided Steve's gaze, looking out just past his shoulder. "I'd like to run some thoughts past you if you have some free time. Bits of memories, some holes here and there."

"I'll make time," Steve promised.

* * *

Steve rolled out of bed, unable to sleep. Thick house shoes protected his feet from the cold floor and thankfully made little noise against the polished surface. The compound's temperature lowered at night, as Tony insisted it was 'scientifically proven to improve sleep'. Steve would have slept on a bed of ice cubes if it meant he could get regular sleep. _Well, maybe not ice_, he thought.

He'd made the mistake of going through Bucky's notebook right before heading to bed; he'd gotten lost in the nostalgia of simply seeing Bucky around, and had put it off until the last minute. He hadn't wanted to spoil the happiness, because he knew it would.

_The Soldier must complete a Presentation of Arms if his Commander is unarmed. It is a demonstration of submission, as well as point of defense for his handler in the event the Asset fails to comply._ _The Soldier must be directed in all aspects of the mission, so it will be necessary to direct whether to use lethal or non-lethal force, and which persons in the crowd are to be considered allies or non-combatants. _

Very clinical. Detached. Almost as if they weren't talking about disassembling his brain and putting it all back in out of order. The little notebook, tucked under one arm as he headed to the lounge, mocked him in its simplicity. _Ten words and your friend is gone_.

He settled into the most comfortable chair and clicked the light on over his shoulder. If he couldn't sleep, he might as well study. _Commands should be issued as soon as possible to direct the Soldier's language of choice, as he will default to Russian. Deviations from the protocol will confuse and decrease Asset working time before recalibration is required._

_Activation Sequence: Zhelaniye, Rzhavyy- _followed by some scribbles that were hard to read in the dark. Steve tilted the book to better catch the single lamplight, having to read around a few scratched-out words and unusual spellings.

Startled beyond belief, Steve's spine nearly crawled up into his brain as a voice interrupted his thoughts. "You having trouble with any of the Russian words?"

Steve jerked into a standing position, the notebook curling up into a baton in his fist. Alice stood across the lounge, just beyond the doorway to the kitchen. She wore too-large pajamas but with an apron tied around her waist, and her hair had been spun up into a sloppy bun held in place with a spoon.

She tucked a large wooden ladle into the single deep pocket of her apron and stepped down the two steps towards Steve, holding out her hand. "Give it here."

"It's two in the morning, why are you up?" Steve asked, surrendering the notebook.

"I'm always awake at two." Alice flipped it around in her hands, frowning at the pages. "Hm. I thought he was going to include phonetics in his notes."

"Do you think you could-" Steve started to ask.

"_Zhelaniye_," she said easily, the buzz resonating warmly from between her teeth. "Bucky talks in his sleep sometimes. I know how to say them."

Steve nodded; he remembered as much from 1944. He didn't feel the need to add that Bucky had called out for her in his sleep after she died. Instead, he added, "his handwriting is also just as bad as I remember."

"I can re-write these for you if you like." Alice ran her hand over the page, tracing a few words with her middle finger. "He's left-handed; the pen slips sometimes."

Steve's eyebrows shot up. "He's left-handed again?"

"What do you mean?"

Steve rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, when we were in school all the kids had to write right-handed."

Alice hummed. "Ah yes, the catholic thing to do."

Steve handed her a pen and she started copying the information to a blank page. She didn't add any additional commentary as she wrote, nor did she seem as furious as before. This seemed more like the Alice he remembered - a quiet, powerful force doling out knowledge and healing in darkness. "Bucky's really lucky to have you."

She snorted, not glancing up from her work. "I'm about as useful as a cardboard box."

"He's better because of you," he insisted. "I'm sorry you don't see it."

"He did all that work himself. All I did was supply a plane ride." Alice snapped the notebook shut with one hand, but clutched it tightly. "I'm still angry at you, Steve, and I'm not apologizing; I'm not sorry I yelled at you."

Steve held up his hands in brief surrender; he didn't want her to get completely fired up again. "I get it. I do. I was angry for a long time when I came out of the ice; I'd be pretty angry if someone asked me to jump back in with no guarantee I'm coming out."

Her voice softened but had developed a subtle venom. "Then you misunderstand."

"Do I?" he asked, genuinely curious.

"I'm angry that you somehow managed to convince Bucky that this was his choice." She handed him the pen and notebook. "He spent too long learning what choice _was_ again to have you take it away like this."

"I won't let anything happen," Steve promised.

"Fuck your pretty promises," she swore. "I want to know you understand that if something happens to him… I'm coming for all of you." There was no evidence of flustered rage or tears on the little healer's face, but he could see a defeat under the tired fury. Not an animal cornered, but one caged too small for comfort; crying out to be heard.

She was promising vengeance; an eye for any eye that might be taken. It was the same power and loyalty that had bound her to the Howling Commandos, and the Commandos to their brothers-in-arms. A willingness to battle until even the soul was spent even as you faced mortal defeat.

Steve remembered what that burning passion felt like. He remembered trying to protect his mother, first of all of those he'd lost. He remembered trying to protect other children and usually failing. He remembered his determination, through whatever broken bones and bruises it might cost, that he wouldn't let a bully take anything by force. He remembered the anger, the fiery intensity of hatred, just sitting in a bombed-out bar in London and wishing he could rain Hellfire over all of HYDRA.

"I understand," he said.

"Am I interrupting?" a curious voice asked. Vision stood in the doorway to the kitchen. "I believe it's two-thirty."

Alice checked the time on the wall clock. "Nope! You're just in time. Come on," she gestured for the android to follow her back into the kitchen, abandoning Steve in the lounge without further comment.

Vision shot Steve a questioning look. "Captain, are you joining us?"

"Am I?" he asked Alice, following at half-speed.

She glanced over her shoulder. "I don't see why not."

So Steve followed. Alice had collected a series of increasingly large pots on the stove, and carefully laid out bowls of ingredients on the kitchen island. Vision peered at an open cookbook on the counter while Alice whirled around the kitchen at her usual speed, turning on additional lights and dragging stools over to the kitchen's island. Vision started to add ingredients to one of the small pots under Alice's careful supervision.

"She's teaching you to cook?" Steve realized out loud.

"She's an excellent teacher," Vision approved. He glanced at the recipe, frowning. "A pinch of vanilla… a pinch?"

Alice poured a large splash of vanilla extract into the steaming pot. "It's supposed to mean just a little, but we're going to ignore that."

Vision watched in mild alarm. "That's far more than anyone's pinch. The recipe-"

"Vague guidelines at best," Alice added in a sing-song voice.

A touch at Steve's shoulder drew his attention to the inclusion of another. "Is that hot chocolate?" Natasha asked.

"Not according to the recipe, no," Vision replied.

"Wanna help?" Alice chirped.

Natasha moved through the room with a grace opposite Alice's, easily evading waving arms trying to stop her from adding a hefty splash of red wine to the simmering pot. Vision declared the recipe all but useless at that point, and he couldn't help but laugh.

Alice doled out the mixture in three mugs, filled up nearly to the rim, and they sampled it together. Natasha drank heavily, and Steve could appreciate the hum of fire that splashed into his stomach. Alice turned to Vision for his assessment.

"Chocolate, sugar, and vanilla in a milk suspension tastes like…" he mused, searching. Alice nodded encouragingly. "It tastes like an excellent use of theobromine."

Alice groaned. "So close, Vis! The flavor isn't just about chemical composition - I know it _is_ all about the chemical composition, but that's not the point." She waved her hand to keep Vision from contradicting the base fact.

"Perhaps if you tried it, you could describe what I'm supposed to… feel?" Vision asked.

Alice shook her head. "I haven't been feeling well lately, I don't think it'd mix well with Tums. We'll try again. That's enough for the night."

"Thanks for the nightcap," Natasha cheered with the mug.

"My apologies," Vision sighed.

"It's a learning process," Alice replied. "I'll try a different recipe next time; maybe something spicy."

Vision excused himself, leaving Steve and Alice alone again. Alice hauled the dishes to the sink and filled them with soap and water. Steve leaned in the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest. Alice continued to ignore him, but it felt less directed _at_ him, and more like normal empty silence.

She looked at him, her expression inscrutable. "You go on and get some sleep if you can; I'll stay and clean up."

"I can help," Steve offered, knowing better than to enter her orbit without permission.

"Nonsense - go sleep," she ordered. "The young whippersnappers need you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."

"If you need anything-" he started to say.

"_I'm fine_," she snapped, interrupting. "I just need to get these clean so when I make breakfast tomorrow everything doesn't taste like chocolate." She scrubbed harder at the glass dishes. "Because that's all- _ah!"_ glass cracked under the force of her hand, stabbing a fierce shard up into her palm.

Steve grabbed a kitchen towel from the counter and moved quickly around the island. "Wait, don't-" he tried to stop her from pulling the glass out of her hand but she beat him to it.

She held her bleeding hand over the sink, letting the blood run down her fingers and down the drain. "Don't ruin the towel, Steve. It'll stop in a moment." In fact, the bleeding stopped before she even finished speaking. She ran her hand under a stream of water, and Steve could see the healing line vanish.

Alice took the dishcloth from Steve's hands and used it to fish the broken glass out of the sink. "You should go to bed, Steve," she said again. "You'll be no good to anyone without sleep."

"You too," he reminded.

"Oh no, whatever will you do without your breakfast cooked to order?" Alice gasped in mock horror. "Poptarts and cereal? Say it ain't so!" She put a hand to her brow like she might faint, then straightened. "Now get out of here before I dose you to _make_ you sleep, Captain."

"Yes Ma'am," he replied on reflex.

The sounds of kitchen cleanup followed him as he left; water sloshing against glass, gentler scrubbing and the shuffling of items in a deep metal sink. Familiar sounds, familiar faces, words and actions repeated again and again through time. A smile or a scowl from the same consistently inconsistent force, friends by your side and lost and friends by your side again. Time spun on an axis around the Captain in a way he could not control but hoped someday to escape.

The warmth of the cocoa spiked with heat of red wine, even though the alcohol didn't do anything for him, soothed away at the fear that kept him awake. Fear for his friend, fear for the future, fear of the unknown. The warmth carried him to bed and closed his eyes but let his thoughts swirl around, following him into the dark.

_If something happens to him, I'm coming for all of you_.

_Zhelaniye. Rzhavyy. Semnadtsat._

_I understand._

_Rassvet. Pech'. Devyat'._

_You know me._

_Dobroserdechnyy. Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu. Odin._

_I'm with you to the end of the line._

_Gruzovoy vagon._

Steve cringed into his pillow as the lights in his bedroom brightened steadily. _"Good morning, Captain Rogers. You have a class in an hour."_

* * *

**A/N:** Lots of really important little things (lots and lots) dropped in this chapter. Can you find them all? It feels weird spending so much time _outside_ Alice's head, as most of WIAS was from Alice's pov. Now there's a bigger and richer world to explore. Next chapter we'll be going deep into Alice's head again (yay!) for the first time since leaving Iceland.

Enough of you said you don't want to know all of the chapter titles that I'm going to leave them off.

Much of what's coming is being written all at the same time to ensure continuity, which is why they're taking so long. I want to ensure that you get a satisfying ending to our mini-series here as I don't intend to write a third story for Bucky and Alice. The closer we get to the end the more I encourage you to go back and give WIAS and RITD a full re-read, as I'm going to be pulling a whooooole lot of things full circle, from symbolism to specific plot details as far back as Chapter 1 of WIAS. Also, if you re-read WIAS, please give it a review! RITD has almost twice as many reviews and I want to spread the love a little.

**News! **We have new cover art for both RITD and WIAS! Give them some love! (They have my fan-cast for Alice on them!) Also, RITD has officially tipped over 100k words!

**I love my reviewers!** LisaPark, Momochan77, TimeLordsRule, SabakuNoGaara426, Guest, Sanguinary Tide, LeandraWhite, tuckerjnp1, Love Fiction 2019, Lucy Jacob, Sulia Serafine, nekokairi, AquaBluey, 0peneyeZ, and TrilbyBard!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	27. Thereafter

"You excited or nervous?" Alice asked Bucky, pulling her legs into a tight cross-legged position on the bed as she watched him dress. Always fascinated by the movements and smooth adjustments of his metal arm, Alice took every opportunity to stare. Those opportunities had been waning recently, as many of Bucky's days extended as he took on more and more responsibilities.

Alice would be hard-pressed to find a reasonable complaint to express about seeing less of Bucky, as with each passing day he seemed more comfortable in the compound; more at ease in the evenings as they shared meals with the Avengers, and more involved in bringing the next generation into the fold.

"Can I be both?" Bucky replied, tugging at the sleeves of his shirt. Tonight was something new; taking the full set of trainees on their final 12-hour training course through the wringer deep in upstate New York's wildest woods.

It would just be Steve and Bucky with the trainees, and also Bucky's first big adventure off the compound; he was being extended an arm of trust, moving past FRIDAY's sensors in case anything went wrong. He was showing he could be valuable here, and Alice could see the excitement that gave him.

Bucky sat down on the bed next to Alice, interlacing his hands and rubbing his thumbs together. Alice looked down at the contrast with him and set her hand on top of his. "You'll do great," she reassured.

"I'm not worried about tonight with the kids, so much that…" Bucky paused. "We're going to start working on a plan - how I get back without too much of a fight."

_Oh, _Alice thought. Out of the loop for almost all of the decisions and planning, she had of course forgotten that part as well. Activation was simple; a few words said in the right language and in the right order, but the reverse had already proved quite tricky. "That's good." She pulled her hand back to make an overly dramatic gesture. "It was an awful lot of work to make you remember me the first time."

But Bucky grabbed her hand like he hadn't been ready to let her go. "I never forgot you, Alice. You were always there." He caressed her hand with his thumb; once, twice. "I will remember you. I always have."

"I'll be there," she promised. "For as long as it takes for you to remember." Alice held Bucky's intense gaze and tried to keep her welling emotions in check. _I'll be there_; it was about all she could promise. She didn't' know anything about brainwashing or torture, and even if she did have some experience with mental torture, she couldn't possibly hope to pretend to be able to help.

A knock on the door interrupted the moment, and Alice pulled her hand out of Bucky's.

"You ready, Buck?" Steve's voice came through the door.

Alice could feel Bucky's eyes on her as she stood and crossed to the door. The feeling faded as she wrapped herself in a warm smile, opening the door to greet her friend. "He's just prettying up for you, Steve."

Steve grinned, leaning down to give Alice a kiss of greeting on the cheek. "Always needed to look his best."

"Well, that certainly hasn't changed. Took forever to get ready in Iceland, too."

"And you're both as full of shit as you were in the forties."

They walked together down the hall, Bucky and Steve ahead and Alice trailing behind; enjoying the reminiscent feeling that fell just short of nostalgia. _Can you feel nostalgic about an experience that's still happening_? Alice thought.

It felt like a painful situation being made right; not just a broken thing being repaired but a careful repair that did not shy past the recognition that it had been broken but that did not make it less valuable. Alice struggled to remember the style of repair that fuzed gold into the broken seams of pottery; that a thing is not ruined for the damage it might have taken but is instead beautiful for the experience.

She fell further behind as they walked outside, greeting the horde of trainees and assembling them into orderly lines. The young kids listened with rapt attention to the instructions given by the old soldiers, even as Alice's thoughts drifted. There was something about rules and responsibilities, and this being their final trial before approval as the new foundation of SHIELD.

Alice watched the recruits run after Steve and Bucky, some already sucking in air like exhaustion was soon to come. She fought the urge to wave, knowing that neither Steve or Bucky would think to look back for her; already so focused on the recruits, they would both be more than fully focused on the task.

"They're so young," Mercedes commented, appearing beside Alice with barely a sound. "It's hard to believe we trust them to drive, let alone hold weapons."

Alice glanced at her, then back at the disappearing group. "They've got to start sometime. And to be fair, Steve doesn't just let them carry weapons around; they're locked up when training is over for the day."

"A group of them were running around last night hollering at the top of their lungs." Mercedes shook her head. "They'll certainly be suffering right about now."

"A little youthful enthusiasm never hurt anyone." Alice smiled. "I see them sometimes at night; they're just excited to be here, Mercedes."

"Well, I'm glad someone's watching out for them." Mercedes checked her watch. "Excuse me - the sun should be coming up on the coast soon and I have some contacts to explore."

"Of course - go get ready to save the world."

"Not the whole world." Mercedes seemed so relaxed, hands casually tucked into her pockets, observing the world with an easy yet detached mood. It was enough to envy; a calm that did not supersede a storm but followed after. There was a certainty there, confidence of skill and something about a steady pace towards an inevitable future.

"Of course," Alice said. She wondered if Mercedes could hear the bitterness in her tone. She hoped not. She didn't want to feel angry as the skilled agent returned to her preparations. She didn't want to feel useless as she watched the long line of recruits vanish into the thick forest, following the two strongest people she knew. She didn't want to feel so empty inside as the sun dipped down low, and the shadows reached out with long fingers to claw at her feet.

Alice turned away as her eyes burned, whether from intense frustration or simply from staring at the setting sun she did not know. Everyone off doing their jobs left the halls empty, the echoing of her footsteps mocking her as she wandered around, looking for a purpose in a world with no more niches left to fill.

"_Are you lost, Miss Sigynsdottir?"_ the AI asked as Alice made her second loop around the building.

"No, just looking for something to do," she replied.

"_There are plenty of books in the lounge; would you like for me to suggest something to read?"_

Alice plunged her hands into her pockets balefully. "No, thank you, Friday. I think I'll just go to bed."

Alice kicked off her shoes and carried them by the heel strap as she retraced her steps. She didn't get lost anymore - she knew where all of the rooms she needed were located, and there weren't that many. Sure, the compound had more than enough square footage for a small city, but also a small city's worth of places that didn't need an Alice wandering around.

Alice wasn't needed in the medical bay; why use plantain or feverfew when penicillin and Neosporin are available? Alice wasn't needed on the helipad or in the hangar bay; plenty of pilots around. Alice wasn't needed in the command rooms or armory or even the broom closet. An unnecessary object just wandering the halls with her shoes in her hand, Alice felt the burden her body placed on the community like shards of glass cutting up into her bare feet, working their way into her skin and traveling through her veins; seeking a heart to slash.

But it was her burden to bear, to suffer that knowledge as a private form of suffering. She couldn't justify imposing on anyone to express her fear, her useless irritation, to show them the emptiness in her purpose where this great community of superheroes had picked up her feeble attempts to help Bucky and flown him to the stars.

So, she smiled. She cooked. She tidied and she collected and she smiled. Alice smiled and laughed and played along as best she could. She lightened the little burdens and she winked as the recruits paused and whispered among themselves. _Come see the animals in the zoo_, she thought as they shared their suspicious in barely-hushed tones_, see them dance and howl for your entertainment_.

But why wouldn't they be curious? The useless girl, playing hero along with the real heroes; let's see her make-pretend at being someone great and see them humor her. How fun. Such a laugh.

Alice pushed open her bedroom door and dropped her shoes off to the right, not bothering to line them up next to Bucky's spare boots. She pulled the borrowed sweater over her head and dumped it on a chair before letting herself fall over onto the hard mattress.

She grabbed Bucky's pillow and held it tightly to her chest, burying her face into the side. The smell of him soothed the pain in her stomach, calmed the rolling wave of nausea surging through her gut and settled the ache developing at the back of her neck. The soreness there came from looking down - down at the ground, at her shoes, at her cooking. Down, a place where she could not see the curious stares and the poorly-veiled scorn.

_I don't blame them_, she thought to herself. _I hate me, too_. Alice buried herself under the covers and held the pillow close enough to nearly suffocate as she tried to remember what it felt like to be useful; to be needed.

* * *

_Pain radiated through her chest, burning, burning like ice left on the skin too long, but not long enough to dull away sensation. She gasped for air but couldn't grasp it, couldn't pull it in enough to soothe the burning need to breathe. It felt like water, like a hot form of drowning._

_Warm hands touched her face, smoothed her hair back. "You're okay honey; everything's going to be fine," a familiar voice reassured her. "Where's your pack?"_

"_Bucky," she pleaded, begging with him for relief, "it didn't work."_

_The warm hands stilled and withdrew, the voice growing concerned. "What didn't work, sweetheart?"_

_She pulled at her chest, trying to show him the window into her heart. But the circle of her neck was empty, empty like her heart. There was only an openly weeping chasm where something important used to be, but was no longer. _

_Hands reached for her throat, pushing her down into the dirt and cutting off the last of her air. "Bucky?" she gasped. "I want to help you."_

"_Shut up," a dark voice growled. There was heat in one and a freezing chill in the other. She tried grabbing at the hands around her throat, but couldn't find purchase as her own were drenched in blood and too slippery to be of any use. _

_She couldn't see anything; the world was falling away into the void in her chest. "It's okay," she soothed, relaxed her grip. "I understand. It's okay." _

_Alice let go of his hands and closed her eyes. The roar of her pulse thundered through her head, like waves it crashed against her senses._

_She could taste the sweat, the salt, the spray of the waves._

_Beating_

_Beating_

_Beating_

* * *

Alice woke as nausea pitched against her chest, nearly choking on it. She rolled to her side, flopped out of bed in the most undignified manner, and stuck her head in a trash can to be sick.

She spat to clear her mouth of the bitter, sour taste and braced herself with shaky arms. As she'd done more early mornings than she'd care to count since arriving in the States, she dragged the trash can over to the attached bathroom and pitched the contents into the toilet. It took a few rinses of water splashed from the sink to get the smell out of the trash can, but she was fairly practiced by that point.

Alice gargled a swig of mouthwash to clear the taste and pulled on the sweater she'd discarded as she left the bedroom. The omniscient AI remained mercifully silent as Alice worked her way through the dark hallways. It had offered more than enough times to call for assistance that it already knew her answer.

Alice slowed her approach to the kitchen as she drew near and could hear the distinct shuffling sounds of bodies moving around the kitchen. _Should I have grabbed a knife?_ Alice wondered as her body tensed. _Stop being ridiculous,_ she chided herself_, nothing's going to happen here; this place is a fortress._

Alice muscled through her fearful reaction and leaned in the doorway, realizing instantly that there was nothing to fear. The distinctive blue-and-white uniforms of the recruits were impossible to mistake; one of them sitting at the island looking rather ill, and a second rummaging around the cabinets.

"Hey, kids; can I help you?" Alice asked, laughing internally as they both nearly jumped out of their skin.

A green-eyed girl jumped up from her seat but looked a little dizzy about it, and a brown-eyed boy leaped to help her while apologizing. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am; the mess hall doesn't have any decent to drink at this hour and we thought-"

Alice waved a hand to interrupt. "Have a seat, you two; I'll make something."

"You're back before the others" she commented idly, setting a kettle on the stove to heat up.

Their faces fell. "I couldn't cut it," the green-eyed girl murmured. "And Freddy insisted on helping me get back."

Alice rushed to reassure. "That's alright; you can always try again. Failure isn't the end unless you give up."

The brown-eyed boy - Alice assumed it to be Freddy - nodded in agreement. "Captain Rogers said something like that."

"Cap's a smart man," Alice added, pulling a few of her own fresh-dried herbs out of the pantry.

"So's Barnes, yeah?" Freddy insisted, and Alice paused in her actions, herbs hovering over a bowl. "Sergeant Barnes was telling us a lot about pain, that it's good for teaching."

"No," the girl interrupted, "He said it's a _good teacher_."

"That sounds more like Bucky," Alice confirmed before she could stop herself. She didn't want to impose upon the image of him that they'd developed, but she just couldn't help it.

"You've met him?" the girl asked, interested.

Alice smiled conspiratorially. "We've crossed paths on occasion."

Freddy crossed his arms, sliding them forward on the table until he could rest his chin on the granite. "He's not like what they said before; on the news, I mean."

"Oh? And what did they say?" Alice asked.

"Well, it's the news, ma'am; you know what they like to say. But," he changed subjects quickly, "when he came to talk, it made a lot more sense. So, when Janie fell, I thought…" he glanced at the green-eyed girl, watching him as intently as Alice. "_Pain is a good teacher, but kindness makes for better lessons._"

"Bucky said that?"

Freddy nodded. "Yes, ma'am. Said he learned it while he was away."

Alice resumed pulling leaves from the bunch, and after determining she had a good blend put the rest of it away again. "What else did he teach you?"

Janie took a thoughtful pause. "He talked a lot about how to… find yourself, I guess. If you get lost after torture."

"That sounds hard," Alice said.

"I think so, but Freddy thinks it's soooo easy." The girl rolled her eyes at her friend.

Freddy snapped up, determined to defend himself. "Hey, I know what I like, and I know what makes me, _me_! That's what it is, right?"

Alice chuckled as she popped the leaves into a thick teapot, and pulled the kettle from the stove just before it started to whistle. She poured the hot water in the kettle but didn't need to bother starting a timer.

Janie sat up, her finger pointed and demonstrative. "Sergeant Barnes told us that no matter what happens, your enemy can't make you forget what's important to you. That what gives your life meaning leaves seeds behind that can grow to remind you of the rest." She glanced at Freddy, then down at her mug. "It sounds so silly to say it out loud, but it sounded real… nice. When he said it."

"Sounds almost like poetry," Alice said.

Janie agreed enthusiastically. "Yeah! He quoted one, once_; You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming; _like if we make enough in our lives to cherish, there's no way to keep us from coming back to ourselves. Talked about how he read a lot of poetry that he found lying around and that it really helped. Told us not to feel embarrassed by the things we use to hold on."

Alice's heart filled near to bursting. "Is that so?" She poured the fresh tea over a leaf catcher and into three mugs - the minty and citrus aroma of her favorite blend of herbs wafted up in a plume of steam. She pushed the mugs across the counter and each ex-recruit took a deep and trusting swig.

Janie and Freddy shared a thoughtful look, clearly remembering some greater meaning behind Bucky's words they had difficulty expressing. It looked like a sign of stalwart courage in their posture, that though they feared the future, they were still headed toward it.

Alice sipped delicately at her own tea, enjoying the soothing action of sharing tea with others in the dead of night, as well as the medicinal action of her blend. Janie looked less green than her eyes after getting through the mug, and Freddy looked like he needed a bit of relaxing as well.

Janie would have insisted on cleaning the mug, Alice was certain, so she avoided the argument by offering to take the empty one as Janie finished it off. Janie surrendered it with grace. "Thank you for the tea, ma'am; I feel much better."

Freddy supported Janie by the arm as she hobbled out of the kitchen, still offering gratitude.

"I've been fairly sick lately myself, so it's no trouble," she called after them, but nearly swallowed her tongue in that instant. Alice's words echoed with meaning around her head, filling her with an empty dread. She fumbled with the mugs, somehow not breaking them as they clacked together and tumbled into the sink.

_I have been so sick lately. I've been so ill, so tired, so emotional. _A directionless fear left her spinning in place as she tried to complete the first, third, and eighth steps needed to relieve her fear all at once. Alice touched her mouth, covering and trying to prevent a keening cry of distress, then pressed her hands together at the level of her stomach, then moved them to her face again.

She needed something that she couldn't locate - hadn't _needed_ to locate before. She couldn't focus enough to come up with a reasonable plan to find it, or use the resources she knew to be available to come up with one. The fear ramped up inside her, stopping short of full-blown terror from the great unknown.

Fleeing the kitchen, Alice kicked off her shoes as she ran, unable to stand the _slap slap slap_ that chased her. She needed help, and without her usual supporter out for the night, she had only one option. _Would I go to Bucky even if he were here?_ She wondered.

She crashed into her intended door and began to pound on it for attention. "Sam!" Alice hissed. _"Sam!_" she hissed louder, banging on his door with renewed fervor. There was a _thump_ followed by some angry swear words as Alice assumed Sam fell out of bed.

"Don't you ever sleep?" he asked, opening the door with a swift _snap_ against the inside wall.

"I'm so sorry to wake you up, but I need you to do me a favor?" She clasped her hands together, pleading with her posture and her eyes.

Sam blinked blearily at her. "And if I decide it's two in the morning and I don't want to?"

Alice's face fell, and she shortened by about an inch as she sagged in defeat.

Sam sighed. "What do you need, Al?"

Alice perked up as hope was renewed. "I need you to tell me where the medical bay is."

Sam examined her curiously. "And that's so important it can't wait until morning?"

Alice nodded slowly.

He raised an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't need stuff like that, being a super-person."

Alice wrung her hands. "_Please_."

Sam's nose wrinkled and he closed the door swiftly. Alice's heart sank into her shoes.

The door opened equally swiftly – Sam had pulled on an old sweatshirt that matched his sweatpants. "Come on, troublemaker. Let's go."

"Oh no," Alice tried to deflect, "I just need directions-"

"Wasn't a question." Sam brushed past her, quick-stepping down the hall. "Come on."

Alice didn't want Sam to lead her there, just give her directions. If he knew, would he ask? Would there be too many questions to answer? Would this make a new burden she had no hope of carrying? "Oh look, a security map," she babbled as they passed one, "I can use-"

"Uh-uh," Sam shook his head, "You're not ditching me." The look he shot her spoke with equal volume.

The heavy silence pressed down on her shoulders. "Okay," she agreed quietly.

She hadn't wanted this. She hadn't wanted to involve anyone in her growing fear or to reveal this moment of weakness beyond a point in the right direction. She already felt inadequate here; a temple full of heroes and one stray cat.

"This is it," Sam announced as they arrived at a locked door. "You wouldn't have gotten in without the code anyway." Sam punched in the access code for the room and opened the door, allowing Alice to pass through quickly.

Alice searched the cabinets, opening doors with some care so as not to disturb the contents in a frenzy. It only took a moment to find the box she needed and pull out a very recognizable test.

"_Oh_," Sam breathed. "Yeah, I guess that can't wait."

Alice shoved the test into her pocket, not even wanting to look at it. Her heart raced as she tried to keep her tone even and her face expressionless. "You can go, I've got what I need."

His look of shock would have been funny under any other circumstances. "Oh _hell_ no, L.T."

Alice's heart twisted. "Thanks," she whispered. She ducked into the little clinic bathroom - surely only meant for drug screening or anyone with a nervous bladder, and went about taking the test. Alice set the test at the end of the sink and washed her hands. She stared at it, willing the little indicating ribbons to appear - but just one, only _one_.

There were people that wanted this, right? Could she will it to them instead? Alice couldn't do that sort of thing, couldn't be someone… someone's family. She didn't know how to be something like that, had to frame of reference to pull an example. She turned the test over, no longer able to bear the wait. She sank to the cold tiled floor, pulled her knees up to her chest, and got ready for an eternity of waiting.

A knock on the door interrupted her suffering. "You okay in there?" Sam asked gently.

Alice reached up and unlocked the door. "It's okay," she said, pulling at the handle, "you can come in."

Sam opened it slowly, and his mouth twisted in displeasure as he saw her barely holding it together on the floor, but he joined her almost immediately, crossing his legs in a slightly stiff motion. "So I thought your…" he gestured vaguely, "you know, whatever you call it… is this even something that can happen?"

"My mutation, you mean? I don't know; the only other healer I met was a boy, and those mechanics are a little different. I don't know… we're all different." Different. An understatement of understatements. "Sam," she whispered, "did you think I was a monster when you found out?"

Sam gave her a look. "That's a dumb-ass question so I'm gonna ignore it."

She ground her teeth together. "But what if I am? What if I'm just stuck in that cycle, spinning around over and over again, and I can't get off no matter how hard I try?"

"Alice," Sam said gently, "do you want to tell me something?"

Alice pulled at the chain around her neck, hoping the familiar action could soothe her. The words, bound up so tight in her chest, begged to be released.

She glanced at Sam, finding earnest concern that edged right up against the line of pressuring. Could he see the secret inside her? Could he see down to that dark place where she'd hidden it; refused to give that grief a name?

Alice looked away, feeling the tension in her mouth that felt like screaming and clenched teeth all at once; the kind that came from begging for help without saying a word. "Before any of this, I was just living on that farm, working on trying to remember what it was like to... I had…" she paused, trying to come up with the right words.

Alice's head tilted as something twisted and pinched viciously in her neck. It felt like a spiteful ghost punishing her for speaking. But she'd started and there was no stopping it now. "I don't remember my family. I know I have one - I have to; people just don't spring up from nowhere - but I don't remember them. I have all the memories that you should probably have with family, but there are just fuzzy blank spaces where the people should be."

"She… made me forget them." Alice cut at the air with her fingers. _"Snip_ \- gone. Just like that, she cut them out of my head. I couldn't even cry about it. I couldn't be sad because I couldn't remember what I had. It just… didn't matter anymore. I remember places and foods, but without the people it just… doesn't matter." Alice could feel that wellspring of fear spilling out from the edges of the locked box where she'd hidden these feelings; could feel the key turning in the lock, feel the door opening, and all the dark and poisonous feelings come pouring out.

"I couldn't bear to tell anyone. I didn't want to hurt people that I knew I'd probably loved before by telling them _I don't know who you are_. So, I just… didn't say anything." Her eyes didn't feel hot with tears, but her throat had gone scratchy and dry like her mouth was trying to keep her from speaking.

Alice wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging them tightly. "I didn't have anyone to go to, anyone who could shelter me outside of that place - not that I recognized, anyway. She was the only person I thought I could go to, so I thought I loved her because of it." She nodded if only to herself. "And I did. I loved her because I had nothing else to love. She… she took them from me so I didn't have anyone else but her to go to."

At the bottom of the box, after all of the other fears had flowed away and the dark waters cleared, the last fear waited with clear eyes and a patient word. Those eyes, too familiar; a smile, curled up at the corners and reached out a tender hand. Her red hair bled away to an Icelandic blonde, and a delicate manicure shredded into brutally short nails as a soft hand reached up. _Look what you've become_, the fear whispered.

Alice turned fearful eyes to Sam. "How is what I did to Bucky any different?"

It fell out of her mouth, more honest and certainly more terrified than she'd hoped to betray. "I kidnapped him, Sam – I took him to Iceland and I isolated him and I filled his head with every thought I could, so how am I different from – how is it any different?" Alice's hands flew into her hair, pulling at it and digging short fingernails into her skin as the violent terror overtook her.

"What if he only stayed because I kept him there?" Her chest heaved as she tried to suck in air, shuddering in and out. "What if I'm just fooling myself about being... what if this time, when he gets his memories back and realizes what I've done, he realizes that I'm a monster?"

Sam grabbed her wrists to keep her from pulling out her own hair. "You're not a monster, Al."

She trembled, close to breaking apart. "How can you be sure? Because I'm not! I frighten people to make them do what I want, and I know just when to smile to make someone look away. I'm becoming _just like her_."

"Al- take a deep breath." Sam took a deep breath as an example and Alice followed. _I'm breathing, and you're breathing with me._ "Monsters don't worry about being monsters."

Sam didn't let go of her wrists until her breathing steadied a bit. She could feel terror washing over her up to her ears; it was a feeling like dying without any of the relief of death. It felt too much like her memories of being unmade; of recognizing the empty feeling inside of you where something important used to be but is no longer.

Sam let go of Alice's wrists as her breathing steadied. She set her hands on the floor, watching her fingers tap against the tile there. "I don't even know where it all went wrong." She made a coughing, short laugh. "I can't remember."

Sam put a hand on her knee, just as a comforting weight there. Sam checked his watch. "It's been five minutes." He looked at Alice with concern. "You ready for this?"

Alice's hands shook, and her throat lingered on the edge of hiccups from stress and fear. She reached up to where she'd left the test on the edge of the sink and slowly drew it down to eye level. A heavy breath forced its way out of her chest; a shuddering near-sob.

"So?" Sam asked, already clearly concerned with her reaction.

"Nope," she whispered, turning the test to show him the single stripe. "No bun in the oven." Another breath caught in her throat, not escaping as easily as the first, and it turned into a shaky laugh.

"Are… are you okay?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," she breathed. "I didn't think I could, anyway; mutations don't make for simple pregnancies. I'm just…" she blinked. "I guess I'm surprised that I'm _not_ upset."

She pitched the test at the trashcan across the bathroom, hitting it right on target for the first time in her life. "Maybe I'm just not supposed to have a family."

"You're _our_ family, Al," Sam protested.

Alice's face twisted into a pained grimace. "I wish I knew what that was supposed to mean. Like… what a real family feels like. I remember what it felt like to be upstate at the school, and I know that they loved each other but it wasn't healthy." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "How am I supposed to know if this is better if I don't remember what it's like to have a family?"

"You're a pain in my ass, Lieutenant. I'll tell you that straight to your face. But I'll always be here for you, no matter what. If you need a body hidden, say one ex-Russian secret agent…" he trailed off with a wink.

Alice laughed, a bark of surprised humor that she hadn't intended. It turned into emotional sobs. Sam grabbed her shoulder and pulled her into a half-embrace, holding her as she sobbed into his shoulder. "Family can be a hard thing to define, L.T.," Sam murmured. "It's not all equal partnerships and a perfect split of responsibilities."

Alice rested heavily against his shoulder. "I'm not good for anything here, Sam."

Sam snorted in disagreement. "That's definitely not true. You're around at 2 am when most of us can't sleep, and all we need to know is that someone else in the world is alive. Plus, you make cocoa; that's a hundred times better than a nightmare."

"But that's nothing-" Alice cried.

But Sam wouldn't hear it. "To _you,_ maybe; to someone else, it might be everything. You want me to list all the ways you need to stick around? Alright then; Miss Alice cheats at chess, but always loses at poker because her face tells the whole story; Alice will make you the best damn cocoa of your life before you even knew you wanted cocoa, but if you really needed tea she'll have already made that instead; Alice knows the perfect fix for your problem but knows when to keep her mouth shut; Alice can feed an army while making it feel like she made every course _just _the way you like it-"

"Sam," Alice interrupted, "none of those things are actually useful."

"You're missing - Alice - the point isn't to be _useful," _Sam emphasized, "you remind us that we're human. You take care of our humanity; of the soft squishy feelings that just want to know someone's paying attention." He patted her knee. "I think - since we're talking about just my opinion - that you've been forgetting to take care of yourself. You can ask us for things - for anything you need. You don't have to be angry with yourself if you can't do everything."

"I don't want to be so angry," Alice admitted hesitantly. "But I don't know how to stop."

Sam shrugged. "Maybe you're right to be angry?"

Alice frowned. "But I don't-"

Sam shook his head. "You'll know. You're nobody's doormat, but you're not a snake pit either."

"So," Alice wiped at her face to clear the two streams of tears. "I'm sure you've got questions you've been dying to ask."

Sam made a thoughtful noise. "Yeah; do you know how bad you are at Poker, or is it just for my benefit?"

Alice burst out laughing. "I swear I had no idea!"

"I think maybe it's because you're a good person; you hate lying to people." Sam patted her shoulder. "You're not just Barnes' plus-one, Al. You're a good person because you're always trying to be a good person."

"It's just me, Sam. I'm just...me. Or I'm trying to be; I can't really be sure what I was like _before_." Alice's head dropped into her hands but lifted it almost immediately. "It's so frustrating! It's like I have to learn who I am all over again! It was so much _easier_ in the forties because I could just be…" she ran out of words. A flicker of light could have blown into comedic life above her head for the violence of the realization.

"Al?" Sam asked. He snapped fingers in front of her face as she failed to answer. "You in there?"

"What?" she asked, jerking out of the thought. "What is it?"

Sam looked concerned. "You stopped talking. Saying something about the forties?"

Alice smiled, sat up straight even from her position on the tile, and all of the worries released from her shoulders. "Yeah, it's just… I think I figured it out." The relief could well have glowed from her pores. Her eyes watered, threatening more tears, but this time they were that exhaustion that comes from an absence of pain - the releasing of clenched fists and grinding teeth.

Sam nodded slowly, his brow furrowing in worry. "Cool, cool; you planning on sharing?"

Alice couldn't help herself; she let out a bold and hearty laugh, a few exhausted tears escaping with it. She tried speaking but that overwhelming sense of lightness overtook her and she could only beam at her friend. She leaned her head back, resting it against the cold wall, and more happy tears slipped down her cheeks. "I was just _me,_ Sam. They took away everything else; all the context and cultural garbage and people I knew, and the pain, and all that was left was… me?" She closed her eyes and cried.

Sam sat in silence with her as she wept painfully relieved tears, relishing in the feeling that did not leave her gasping for air or heaving with stressed stomach pain. He left a hand on her knee, just reassuring her of his presence, never complaining about discomfort on the cold tile floor or the cramped quarters of the side bathroom.

Alice could not say how long they stayed there, the silence for once appreciated rather than unwelcome, but they were eventually interrupted by Stark's omnipresent AI speaking gently from the ceiling. _"Miss Sigynsdottir, you asked to be informed when Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes were returning to the compound grounds."_

Alice opened her eyes and dried her cheeks with the sleeves of her sweater. "Yes, thanks FRIDAY." She turned happy eyes on her friend, still glowing a little on the inside. "Shall we?"

Alice stood, stretching her back. "I think I sat on the floor for too long."

"You're getting old, girl," Sam joked, offering a steadying hand.

"Well," Alice laughed, "My twenty-eighth birthday was in 1944, so…"

Sam held the door open for her as they left the medical bay, and made sure that it locked properly behind them. "Better get you a walker; I'll even put tennis balls on the feet for you."

Alice hunched over like an old lady, shuffling her feet along. "Get me a wheelchair instead. That way I can run over Tony's feet when he calls me names."

Sam walked her down the hall, letting her talk and make terrible jokes. She felt… better. Lighter. It didn't hurt to make jokes, and it didn't feel like putting on a front to smile. She wondered if it looked brighter or warmer on the outside. She wondered if the air had ever smelled so nice at the compound before as they stepped out into the pre-dawn light.

"Damn cold in the morning," Sam grumbled. "Should've grabbed a coffee first."

"I'll make some in a few," Alice promised. "Breakfast, too?"

"Now you have to - I want a full breakfast; eggs, bacon, toast-" Sam ticked off the items on his fingers and Alice laughed. Laughing felt so good again.

Their attention was drawn to the grounds as Steve broke through the treeline first, leading the strongest runners at the front of the pack. The evident strength faded as the ground thickened in the middle, the slightly stronger runners encouraging and pushing their friends to emerged from the trees last, following up the rear with two panting, shambling trainees.

They caught up, panting and heaving to catch their breath. Steve and Bucky shared a few jokes that Alice couldn't hear at that distance, but Bucky shook his head, grinning at some terrible pun.

Steve said something to Bucky, clapping a hand on his shoulder in encouragement. Bucky looked confused, but shrugged. He stepped towards the exhausted trainees and clapped his hands together to get their attention.

"Congratulations on completing your initial training," Bucky called out, his voice booming over the crowd. "You'll be trusted not to fuck up now."

A cheer went up through the group, though Alice had to laugh as it came out more like a bedraggled moan of exhaustion. Some of them flopped backward onto the grass, spread-eagle, but faces clearly happy through the fatigue.

"Alright," Sam said to Alice, "that's enough ceremony; I need coffee or I'm throwing you in the lake."

A golden sun rose slowly, burning away the morning mist.

* * *

A/N: It feels so weird that sometimes my chapters take place over the course of several days (The News), sometimes it's hours (Selfish), and sometimes… just a few very long minutes (Fallen Angels). I like to think that I write how our memories are structured - you remember an entire summer because of an overall feeling, but also remember one specific sunset. Here's hoping my writing style doesn't give you a conniption! I'm so excited for everything that follows this chapter, my dudes. _Hold onto your tits. _That's all I'm gonna say on the matter.

I love my reviewers! TrilbyBard, nekokairi, LoveFiction2019, nerdalertwarning, SabakuNoGaara26, Omega-66, Momochan77, Sanguinary Tide, Mia, TimeLordsRule, p0mel0, tuckerjnp1, LisaPark, TheCauldron, 0peneyez, AquaBluey, PistolHattersButtercup, and Paula Sullivan!

Special thanks to Sanguinary Tide for reviewing my outline and pointing out the plot holes!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	28. The Stages of Grief

Alice hummed to herself as she scrubbed the dishes. The warm late morning light flickered along the top of the windows, catching her attention as it tried to slip through her hands and into the sudsy water. Alice still liked washing dishes by hand; the tactile experience of undoing mistakes, of making things clean, all of it gave her a measure of peace.

Agent Merced had gathered all of the Avengers shortly after breakfast, promising developments in the plan. Alice had sent them along with hot coffee and an earnest smile, doing her best not to let doubt creep back into her newly opened heart. _Just because you're not needed there doesn't mean you're not needed at all_, she reminded herself.

She brushed off the seed of worry away like flour from her apron, dismissing the notion with a strength she was just beginning to remember. _I think I'll make something sweet today_, she decided, drying off the freshly cleaned dishes. A sliding of porcelain on porcelain chimed through the empty kitchen like idle wind-chimes, and glasses echoed a late chorus as they were returned to the shelves. A repetitive tune, a reliable melody, an ebb and flow of the routine.

Alice could be happy here; she hadn't been sure on arrival, but she could be certain now. It took a special kind of distance from fear to realize the unusual truth of the Avengers' Compound. Alice could see now that niches had been carved for only a few select people, and the rest were dug by hand by determined occupants. The gravity of belonging was held together by a self-launch above the atmosphere, adjusting altitude and speed until a stable orbit was achieved. To find your place in this world was not to stumble into a hole that happened to be just your shape but to stake out the land and fight anyone who came for it.

_Snickerdoodles, I think_, Alice decided.

"Miss Alice?" a measured voice interrupted her thoughts. The android stood at a respectful distance but leaned his head into the kitchen as a part of getting her attention. Repeated calls of _Miss Sigynsdottir_ in the measured tone had left Alice feeling oddly distant from him so she had tried to insist on _just Alice, Vis. _They had compromised with _Miss Alice._

Alice wiped her hands on her apron. "What's up, Vis?"

Vision offered a little smile; he seemed to enjoy the variety of nicknames he'd accumulated at the compound and never refused one, not even Tony's wide range of cultural references. "If it's not too much trouble, I believe it would be a good time for tea." He gave her a meaningful look.

_Tea is good for tension_, she'd told him one night over cooking lessons, _it gives people something to do with their hands and a way to hide an angry scowl._"Yeah? I'll have something in a few."

"Much obliged," he added with a dip of his head, excusing himself to return to the conference room.

Alice loved Vision's quirky mannerisms. He bordered on Victorian; that everyone was granted a title and the best of his manners, but that he could also stop just short of telling you to go to Hell in just the _nicest_ manner. He had all of Tony's best qualities but far more refined.

He could talk about tea longer than most people; it was the one thing he actually enjoyed for more than just chemical composition. He enjoyed Jasmine and Earl Grey the most, for both the flavor and the rich history, and how much someone must have loved the very essence of that tea to preserve it for so long.

Alice made Jasmine tea, but she pulled out the clear, borosilicate teapot. She used a special blooming tea that unfurled long leaves slowly in the hot water like rays of morning sunshine, staining the water a delicate gold. Vision would like it, she thought. Sam would think it was ridiculous. Somehow both were appealing thoughts.

Teapot, honey and sugar, nine teacups; all got piled onto her favorite tea tray - _goodness gracious I have a favorite tea tray now_, she thought - and Alice added a packet of cookies as an afterthought. _Steve likes sweets._

It took a precarious balancing of the tray on one hip as she opened the glass door and Alice could instantly hear the uneasy tension in the conversation she stepped into.

At the head of the table, Steve leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "I don't know - are you certain?"

Bucky, seated at Steve's left, caught her eye as she entered and she could see a mild smile wrinkle the corners of his eyes.

"We're not asking the new agents to help with this." Merced stood at the foot of the table, gesturing with a dry erase marker to five red dots on a map displayed on the large screen. "Two per site, just as a precaution, but I'll take the last site on my own."

Alice glanced at the board, seeing names scrawled in Merced's hard, blocky handwriting.

_Rogers/Stark_

_Wilson/Barnes_

_Maximoff/Rhodes_

_Vision/Romanoff_

Alice set down the heavy tray, settling a rattly spoon with her thumb. "You can't team them up like that - Sam or Bucky will end up in a body bag, Rhodey and Wanda aren't besties either, and God only knows what Natasha will say to Vision. May I?" Alice held out an expectant hand.

Merced reluctantly surrendered the dry erase marker. Alice flipped it around to the eraser end and wiped the list clean. She paused for a moment, thinking.

"My name's spelled W-I-L-" Sam called.

"Shut your piehole, birdbrain," Alice shot back. The pen looped through the shortened names easily, squeaking a little against the board. The tailing flick of ampersands felt like a wink between friends.

_Cap & Sam_

_Tony & Rhodey_

_Wanda & Vis_

_Bucky & Nat_

"But-" Alice bit her lip, tapping the pen thoughtfully against her chin.

"Yes, Miss Sigynsdottir? Do you have _more_ concerns about the plan you've not been involved in developing?" Merced had no trouble calling Alice by her full name and had resisted Alice's multiple attempts to familiarize herself. _Please,_ she'd tried, _I'm just Alice. _Alice tried not to take personally the rebuffs of her attempts at something resembling friendship.

Quietly, she'd asked Natasha about it. _Agents aren't really about being warm and fuzzy_, the Russian had laughed quietly. _Try not to let it get to you_. The fact that Alice had learned to make Russian treats seemed to be the way to Natasha's heart, and that would have to be enough.

It didn't help that Alice just _had_ to be contrary. "It's just…" Alice wrung the tea towel in her hands. "The kids - the new agents will be alone on the compound."

"They're not alone; you're here," Vision added helpfully.

Bucky sat up straighter in his chair. "If she's here alone, then I'm staying."

Merced sighed in exasperation. "Sergeant Barnes, this place is a fortress; she'll be just fine."

"It's alright," Natasha chimed in, "I don't need a babysitter."

"So what's our timeline for this?" Steve asked, quickly moving everyone past the question.

Merced seemed unbothered, even through the apparent disruption to her plan. "This is just the first reconnaissance mission; there's no reason we can't get this done today."

"They're quite far, though." Alice pointed at the map on the screen. "That's an hour west of Saratoga Springs, so that's about... three hours from here. That one's at least _four-_"

Merced shot her a cold look. "Thank you, Miss Sigynsdottir. I think we're all set for tea now."

Alice had heard many versions of _go fuck yourself_ before, but Merced was quite good at it. "Yes, of course; I'll just excuse myself." She moved teapot and accouterments from the tray so she could clear the table of the clumsy item. "Jasmine tea, sugar for Agent Merced and Rhodey, honey for Natasha, Sam, and Tony."

Wanda spoke up for her - an unusual first. "You can stay, Alice-"

Alice waved it off, not wanting to risk putting a rift between Wanda and the agent. "No, no - I've got some baking that'll burn if I stay."

"I like chocolate chip," Tony chimed.

Alice hefted the tray against one hip, leaving her hand free to work the door. "I'll keep that in mind. Any other requests?" Various calls of "Peanut butter cookies," and "_Oreshki," a_nd lastly"oatmeal raisin," followed the question.

"Which one of you monsters said _oatmeal raisin_?" Tony demanded, his indignation following Alice out of the room.

* * *

The morning had yielded to early afternoon when the assembly of heroes disbanded. Alice could hear it - the voices suddenly echoing down the hall and around the kitchen like a bar closing down for the night. _You don't have to go home but you can't stay here_.

The oven beeped to get her attention and Alice slipped on her oven mitts. The comforting scent of sugar and cinnamon bloomed as she opened the door and pulled out two sheets of cookies. She carefully moved them to cooling racks, and admired her work.

"Pardon me, ma'am," a warm voice purred to her left, "I'm looking for the mess hall; could you give me directions?" His presence announced, Bucky caught her around the waist, his thumbs just slipping under her shirt to tease at her skin.

Alice turned slowly in his delicate embrace, smiling up at him. "You're in the right place, Sergeant, but I'm afraid your name is dead last on the list tonight - you've gotta help dish out the slop first."

A wry twist of his lips betrayed the smirk he tried and failed to hide. "That sounds like punishment."

Alice stood on her toes to give him a swift kiss and danced away before he could distract her further. "You're going to have me all to yourself tonight, Sergeant Barnes."

"Is that a promise, Ma'am?" Bucky made a pained face, clutching at his metal shoulder. "Because I'd hate to get the cold shoulder again."

Alice plucked warm cookies from the tray and wrapped them in parchment paper, dropping them in pairs into open paper bags already heavy with food. She counted them as she folded them shut. "Two bags for Sam and Steve, one for Nat, two for Wanda and Vis. Meet back here when you're all done with your chores and I'll make sure you get a gold star."

Bucky's eyes sparkled with laughter.

"What?" Alice asked.

"Nothing," Bucky said, even though his eyes continued to laugh.

"That gold star is _rapidly_ becoming a silver one."

Bucky grabbed the bags but stole a kiss as he leaned past her. "I'll be good."

Alice liked him like this. He'd somehow merged together with the Bucky of 1944, the Bucky of Iceland, and whatever he was becoming on the Compound. He'd been closed off on their arrival; afraid of the expectations and more than aware of the suspicions. He'd figured it out; weathered the storm and come out beyond his fears.

Could Alice say she had done the same? She could barely identify her fears - this nameless, faceless creature that lingered in the dark places of her heart and whispered things she tried to remember were only half-truths.

_**You barely do anything**_, it hissed as she gathered the remaining paper bags.

_I do what I can, and it is needed,_ Alice reminded herself. _I am enough._

"Friday, where are Tony and Rhodey?" she asked the ceiling.

"_Hangar Bay One,"_ the ceiling replied.

"Rough directions, please?"

"_Directly across the lawn, and to the South of the helipad."_

"Thank you!" Alice chirped.

Out of reflex more than anything, Alice gauged the level of the sun against the horizon as she walked across the grass. _Six hours of sunshine left_, she guessed. It would be dark before anyone made it back to the compound, assuming all went according to Merced's plan.

They were both in the process of loading suits onto the jet - Tony with his vibrant red and gold, and Rhodey with the more muted gunmetal gray. _Just a precaution, I'm sure_, Alice tried to reassure herself._ A precaution against the sensation of a sharp sword slicing through your throat. _She could still remember the feeling.

Rhodey spotted Alice first and nudged Tony with his elbow to make him turn. Alice waved and almost dropped a paper bag. Tony rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Hey you two - glad I caught you; here!" She held out two bags in a clenched hand.

Tony just stared at her. "What is this?" he asked, not taking the bag.

Alice shook it a little. "Just take it, Tony."

He looked down at the bag. "I don't like being handed things."

"I guess billionaires don't know what sack lunches look like" Rhodey grabbed one bag out of Alice's grip. "Thanks."

Tony looked amusedly surprised. "Did you seriously pack _lunches_, Ripley?"

"They're more like lunch _and_ dinner, but are you turning down Nutella and raspberry jam sandwiches?" Alice held the paper bag out closer to him. "Snickerdoodles, too."

He eyed it suspiciously. "Who made the snickerdoodles; you or _I, Robot_?"

"I made them, Tony." She grinned toothily. "Though yours come with a side of arsenic."

Tony took the paper bag. "If these crack a tooth I'm locking you out of the kitchen for good. I mean it; one strike you're out."

Alice started to walk away, waving idly over one shoulder."I'll see you in the morning, Tony." The jet's engine's roaring to life chased her out of the hangar bay, like Tony's version of a retort. Alice tapped a communications panel on the exterior of the building. "Friday, where is Agent Merced?"

"_Agent Merced is currently retrieving supplies from the storage lockers."_

"Oh - which bay is she leaving from, I'll just meet her there."

"_Hangar Bay Five."_

Alice struck out for Hangar Five, not bothering to rush across the concrete if Merced wasn't already getting ready to leave. She skipped to the far end a few times to let the jets pass, waving enthusiastically to the variety of pilots; Tony ignored her, Steve saluted, Vision waved back, and Nat sort of nodded in acknowledgment.

Merced's jet was still parked when Alice arrived, with no sign of the Agent. Alice leaned in the wide-open hangar bay door and took a few moments to just enjoy the afternoon air. Most of the jets departed, she could hear the bird-calls resuming, the gentle hum of insects milling around, and a light breeze rustling the grass that was just about due to be cut.

"Oh, it's you." Merced's curt tone cut through the natural music of the Compound. She walked past Alice, dropping a heavy duffel next to the foot of the jet's ramp. "Do you have more holes you'd like to stick in the plan?

Alice could relate to the sour note in Merced's voice; she hadn't appreciated anyone questioning her methods or expertise in the past. She should have tried to make her suggestions more tactfully. _Next time_.

Alice held out the last paper bag. "I didn't know what you liked, so I just made you the same as everybody else. I hope you don't have any allergies?"

Merced's gaze slowly moved from Alice's face to the bag. She stared at it like it might explode. "I don't."

"I wanted to say thank you; for everything. I know that you're probably more interested in getting Masters out of HYDRA's control but… it means a lot to us as well. So… thanks." Alice stepped closer, shaking the bag just like she'd done for tony. "Just take it, Mercedes. We're all on the same team, right? I'm sorry if I stepped on your toes."

Mercedes lifted the duffel again, and this time she took the bag from Alice's grasp. "It's all right. Everything will work itself out."

Alice beamed as Merced continued to look cross, like she'd surrendered some personal ground. "Have a safe flight," Alice said, clasping her arms behind her back.

"Thanks," Merced grumbled slightly. Without another word she ascended the ramp, punching the button to raise it and seal the jet. Alice moved back closer to the walls of the bay and waved as the jet powered-up and rolled out of the Hangar. Merced ignored her.

The sun caught her eyes as she struck out across the lawn towards the main building again. _Five hours of sunshine left, _she automatically gauged. The daytime creatures were making note of the light as well, scurrying across the grass to collect fruits and seeds before twilight's predators began to stretch and go hunting.

Alice's hand drifted through the air, skimming along the tops of imaginary tall grasses and wildflowers. Alice made a mental note to ask Tony why he bothered keeping the lawns as useless manicured turf. She wondered if she could at least convince him to switch to clover.

"Where's my gold star?" Bucky called out when she came within shouting distance. He was waiting for her on the concrete patio, arms crossed to display either impatience or worry.

"You worried I'm not good for it?" Alice called back.

Bucky ducked his head, hiding a chuckle. "I seem to remember you running out on a bill for French lessons."

Alice processed the comment as Bucky kissed her cheek in swift greeting, and indignant shock left her gaping like a fish. "Running out on - you call _hurtling through time_ stepping out on your French lessons?!"

Bucky smirked. "I call it like I see it."

Alice crossed her arms, glaring. "Well, we can start to call it even since I've evidently been acting as your personal lending library." She smirked. "_You cannot keep Spring from coming._ That's Neruda, darling."

Bucky held open the door for her, conceding defeat with a quiet "Chatterboxes, the lot of 'em."

Alice skipped inside, still beaming with her victory. "Don't be too hard on them - not a lot of superheroes quote poetry."

"It's not _all_ garbage," he admitted.

"How magnanimous of you," Alice drawled, heading for the kitchen to make a late lunch.

Bucky followed. "I think he must have been writing about you," he said thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?" Alice asked, her hand paused above the pantry's doorknob.

Bucky moved slowly through the kitchen, trapping her with an intense stare that felt far from predatory and more… reverent. "_Of everything I have seen, it's you I want to go on seeing,"_ Bucky reached out, twirling the end of her braid around his fingers.

He released her braid to caress the side of her face, and Alice's breath hitched in her throat. _"Of everything I've touched, it's your flesh I want to go on touching."_

"_I love," _he whispered, drawing so close that Alice could have counted his eyelashes if she had the mind to focus, _"your orange laughter."_

Desperate for something to touch, Alice pulled at the front of Bucky's shirt and his eyes sparkled with laughter. "See?" he asked, "It's all about you."

It was a relief when he kissed her, but only very briefly. It was so soon not enough; not the warmth and also chill of his touch, not the tickle of his beard on her face, not the pressure of his body against hers. "Bucky…" Alice whispered.

Never unaware of exactly what he did to her, Bucky's questions came with a hint of satisfaction. "You need something, Doll?"

Alice pulled at his shirt. "You are wearing _entirely_ too much clothing."

Bucky captured her hands to keep her from stripping him in the middle of the kitchen. "Well, ma'am, you're lucky my bunk is just around the corner."

"Too far," Alice complained.

He hummed thoughtfully, kissing her neck and keeping her from thinking properly. "I could sweep you off your feet, if you don't mind."

"Oh Sergeant Barnes, _please_ sweep me off my feet," Alice wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning heavily against him.

"Yes, ma'am." In a flash of steel and grinning teeth, Bucky swept her off her feet, holding her in his arms like a new bride.

"_Mon chéri," _he addressed her crisply as he moved smoothly through the halls.

"_Ya lyublyu tebya tak iskrenne," _his voice resonated in her chest, the words now beyond her understanding.

He switched languages again as he carefully lay her down on their bed. _"că te-aș ruga să nu mă părăsești niciodată."_

He kissed every inch of flesh he found as clothing was pulled off and thrown away, changing languages as he spoke into her skin. _"lkn la 'astatie altahaduth eindama tanzur 'iilaya..."_

It was his eyes that betrayed the depth of his desire; something that didn't stop when they parted ways in the morning, or closed their eyes at night. It resonated through their bodies as he touched her, caressed her skin, pulled her close to him. _"dus ik kan alleen bidden dat je mijn hart hoort."_

* * *

More than a little while later, the late evening found Alice and Bucky milling around the kitchen again. Bucky had suggested just scrounging from the massive pantry but Alice would hear no such thing, insisting on eating 'real food'. Alice moved on bare feet through the kitchen, content in a t-shirt and pajama pants. Bucky had dressed at barely a better level, but only because he wore shoes and jeans.

Bucky supervised loosely as Alice whipped together a batter and tucked the lumps of dough into a swiftly pre-heated oven "You seem to know your way around now."

"I've baked so much I could probably find my way blind if I had to," she agreed. "I can make all the toys here do _exactly_ what I want."

"This is pretty much the first place anyone thinks to look for you, yeah," he said.

"You and Steve both eat as much as all the others combined - it's the only way to keep up! And dishes, always dishes! I know there's a good dishwasher, but it's just not the same." Alice poured water into the dirty dough bowl as she spoke, intent on getting the mixture off before it hardened.

Bucky followed her around the island and Alice didn't mind as he stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and setting his chin on her shoulder as she washed dishes. "Steve and I talked a lot the other night, when we were out."

Alice adjusted the sink so the running water wasn't quite so loud. "Oh? What did you talk about?" she asked.

"That memory we couldn't place, for one. The sound of berries in tin - it was Rowan berries." his fingers plucked a little at the hem of her shirt; a little self-comforting measure. "Back then, after you left… Me and the boys were up in the mountains, and we didn't know yet about the LST-6. I found some red berries and I was going to send 'em to you. I had 'em with me when Steve told me you'd… you were gone."

"Oh," Alice breathed. The clean bowl dripped onto her bare feet as Alice reached for a clean dishcloth just out of to dry it.

But Bucky's embrace tightened slightly, preventing her from moving far; possessive, protective. "Were you very angry with me?"

Alice set down the bowl on the counter, deciding she could dry it later. She tapped his arm and Bucky loosened his grip, allowing Alice to turn and see the discomfort in his eyes. She wrinkled her nose in mock displeasure."Oh - I definitely was, but not for very long. I was going to figure out a way to sneak back. Maybe put on a fake beard and pretend to be an old man." Bucky smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. Alice pressed a hand to his cheek, the stubble of his beard roughing up her palm. "But I know what you were trying to do. I think so, anyway."

The oven's timer beeped for her attention and Bucky let her move past. "You know," she laughed, pulling on the set of oven mitts, "if either of our plans had worked out in 1944… we wouldn't be here together."

"I'll send HYDRA a thank-you card." He snapped his fingers, suddenly reminded. "Stark thinks if we can track down one of HYDRA's machines, he might be able to program it to work in reverse."

Alice almost lost the spatula as she whirled, ecstatic. "Really? That's wonderful!"

Bucky shrugged. "It's just a theory right now, Doll. We haven't found it yet."

But Alice smiled all the same. If Tony had come to Bucky with a possible solution - or more likely, had gone to Steve who'd relayed the message - then there was hope there. Hope for acceptance, for a welcoming into the fold; for Bucky, at least. _That's all I could hope for him_, Alice knew. She wanted, more than anything, but Bucky to have a family.

_Maybe,_ she considered, _after all of this is over… we can stay_. The thought threw up barriers almost as instantly as it was formed; first and foremost revolving around a particularly intimidating yet blurry photo of the Winter Soldier that rolled around the news tickers every now and again.

She also missed the solitude that Iceland had provided. Their home, _theirs_, even though the cabin had barely worked half the time. But, Alice considered, Iceland hadn't been a solitude of choice but of necessity. Could she really say she wanted to give up this second chance at a family?

The presentation alone being a habit, Alice transferred cookies to a plate and arranged them neatly. Bucky watched her curiously but did not interrupt as she gathered their smorgasbord of cheese, cookies, and whatever leftovers Alice had squirreled away. He helped her carry everything to the den, still shuffling the arrangement, holding his question until she sat down on the long sofa, just staring at the food without eating anything.

He set a hand on her knee. "You alright, Doll?"

"It's really nice here," Alice said flatly.

"I'd think you'd be happier about that," Bucky said.

Alice bobbed her head agreeably but pursed her lips. "I can't help but miss when it was just us, but I also like how… crazy it all feels."

A roar of enthusiasm rushed by as a group of the new SHIELD agents ran past the den's large windows, barely clothed, sopping wet from an apparent midnight dip in the lake.

"Case in point," Alice laughed, watching them fondly.

They hadn't seen Bucky or Alice, clearly, and had probably assumed that with all of the jets absent from the bays they had the whole compound to themselves to celebrate.

The lights flickered as she laughed, and died abruptly.

The vents thundered as they shuddered to a stop.

The utter silence of a quiet room pressed against their ears.

Bucky stood immediately but grabbed Alice's hand as she stood. "Wait," he ordered under his breath.

Alice held her breath as they looked out of the window, seeing lights flicker and die across the compound. Some lights stayed on, and the distant figures of the new agents ran in and out of the lights like children through a sprinkler in summer.

Alice relaxed slightly. "I think it's time to cut them off," she reasoned. "Running around is one thing, but playing Scary Movie is another."

She should have felt relieved - just a little jump, just a little harmless scare from the new kids on the block.

But Bucky stayed on edge and did not let go of her hand.

"Friday?" he asked the ceiling.

The computer did not answer.

The hairs on the back of her neck started to prickle with fear. "They shouldn't be able to knock out Stark's AI. and-" Motion on the half-lit lawn caught Alice's attention.

Some of the agents had started to run back towards the compound, and she could just make out the shape of… Alice's heart shot into her throat and then plummeted immediately into her stomach. Bright against the sunlit woods, brilliant almost, in contrast, a white-cloaked figure moved across the lawn. "Bucky," she croaked. "He's… he's _here_."

The figure's shape turned, surveying. He was almost… listening. He turned, and Alice could almost feel the exact moment that those empty eyes locked on to her location.

Bucky reacted before Alice. The window shrank away as he pulled her through the den and down the hall. Alice could already hear his voice, though; the drawl that haunted the dimly lit corners of her nightmares.

But his voice wasn't the first sound to echo down the halls. The first sound stopped Alice dead in her tracks, yanked her hand out of Bucky's grip as the sound alone ripped at her insides; screaming. Confused, pained, agonized screams. It threw her back in time for a moment as she forgot _when_ she was, almost expecting to hear the resonant concussive cry of a mortar tear through the earth.

Bucky seized her hand and she was back again. "Wait!" she cried, wrapping her arms around Bucky's.

He looked confused at her refusal. "I need to get you out of here-"

"The kids, Bucky! The _kids!_" Alice insisted. "They don't stand a chance."

Bucky's eyes darted from side to side as he thought quickly. He swore sharply through ground teeth. "Come on," he demanded, opening a door and beckoning her to follow.

It was just a spare bedroom - theirs was much further down the hall - and Alice's face twisted with confusion as Bucky pulled a knife out of his boot and pressed it into her hands. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"You have to be armed," he said exceedingly gently.

Alice held it loosely, almost dropping it. "Bucky, I wouldn't stand a chance against-"

"You have to be armed, because…" he stepped back, "my Commander must always be armed."

The bedroom light flickered briefly but stayed on.

"...what?" Alice's voice nearly failed her. "What? Have you lost your god-damned mind!? No! I'm not-" she shook her head.

"You have to," Bucky insisted, adding more softly, "It's okay."

She swore sharply. "_Fuck_ okay! It's supposed to be Steve – he knows what he's doing, you practiced everything with _Steve-_"

"Steve's _not here_, Alice."

"I don't have your book-" Alice sputtered.

Bucky countered, "I know you know the words. Steve told me you helped him."

Alice threw up her hands in frustration. "But you don't have your vest or your guns or anything - you're barely dressed! It's the stupidest, most suicidal-" Alice ran out of breath, had to pause. "They're on their way, Bucky - they _have_ to be! We can just wait for them to come back, stall for time somehow, then-"

"_Alice_," Bucky interrupted, "what do you think I'm trying to do? The longer we wait the more of those kids die, and we're all they've got right now."

_Of course. _Being the soldier, of course, he'd figured out the math a lot faster than she had. The cold realization washed over her, the icy breath of inevitability gripping her lungs and choking her words. It brought clarity - the tension in his face, the resignation.

"I fucking hate you," Alice murmured as the first tears slipped down her cheeks. Emotion clawed at her heart and bubbled up into her voice. She smiled because she didn't know what else to do even as she wept openly. "I'm not ready to say goodbye," she said.

Bucky's jaw tightened, and Alice could see the fear he was trying to hide there."I will remember you," he promised.

"You don't know that!"

"Alice Hrafnhildur Sigynsdottir, _I will remember you." _He held a hand to his heart. "I always have."

_Now, of all times_, she thought. _Now, when peace had arrived._ She'd run out of words; out of protests and desperate pleadings. Alice knew it was right - not right for them, but just the _right thing_. She opened her mouth, hoping a new protest would fly out and some plan would ignite in her brain. Something, anything-

"Now... it has to be _now_, Alice," Bucky insisted, seeing her hesitation bordering on acceptance.

Alice's head dropped, staring at her bare feet on the floor that barely peeked out from the too-long pajama pants. She curled her toes under, scraping the nails against the soft carpet. She flexed her toes again but gripped the soft texture of the carpet.

She moved her gaze to Bucky's boots, then up to the comfortable jeans and loose shirt. _So vulnerable_, she thought as she looked him in the eye. She hoped he could see that her pain came from a place of compassion, that her hesitation was not from fear _of_ him, but fear _for_ him. There was no good way to say all of that, not in such a short time, nothing but… compliance.

"_Zhelaniye," _she said softly, but she could see his face relax with her acceptance. Alice continued, the Russian words too familiar - too many nights she'd heard them gasped in nightmares not to know exactly how to spit poison. _"Rzhavyy. Semnadtsat."_

His head twitched to the side and he grimaced as if attacked by a sudden crippling headache. But Alice knew she could not stop - she couldn't yield to the fear now, let her compassion overtake the courage necessary. _"Rassvet. Pech'. Devyat'."_

Bucky clenched his teeth and fists, and it was clear he was fighting _not_ to fight it. _"Dobroserdechnyy." _He staggered slightly, and instead of bracing himself on the wall he accidentally put a fist through the drywall.

Alice continued. "_Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu. Odin." _Her voice trembled but did not crack. Whatever the churning pile of anger and sorrow in her heart, she wouldn't fail him in this.

His head tossed back, showing veins bulging in his neck from some unseen flare of pain. Alice averted her eyes out of reflex but forced herself to look up again as she sealed the coffin. _"Gruzovoy vagon."_

Bucky's body went slack, the tension draining from his body. Alice held her breath, unsure if it worked, too scared to ask. If it hadn't worked, what was the next plan? If it did...

He opened his eyes.

But it wasn't Bucky any more - Alice could easily see that he'd lost the amused wrinkle at the corners of his eyes, the wry twist of his lips when he tried not to smile. His eyes swept the room swiftly, once, before settling on her face.

"_Dobroye utro, Soldat," _Alice said gently.

"_Ya gotov otvechat'." _The Soldier growled.

* * *

A/N: Sorry if you got whiplash from the tone change. (Sorry not sorry) Keeping the author's note short to avoid accidentally giving stuff away. Next up is the hardest chapter I've ever had to write: a fight scene. Please be patient.

I love my reviewers! Omega-66, PistolHattersButtercup, Goldenfightergirl, Momochan77, LisaPark, LoveFiction2019, nerdalertwarning, TimeLordsRule, xRaspberryx, Sanguinary Tide, Flours, Ann, nekokairi, and readingtilldawn!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**

****Translations of Bucky's five-language-pillow-talk are for good cookies who log in and leave reviews** **

**And if/when we tip over 550 reviews I'll post the translation for errybody (for those of you who post as Guests)**

**Edit 9/26: Y'all probably won't see this, but ahead of the chapter I'm about to post here are the translations for this chapter:**

_Mon chéri, (French)_  
-My darling,  
_YA lyublyu tebya tak iskrenne, (Russian)_  
-I love you so sincerely,  
_că te-aș ruga să nu mă părăsești niciodată (Romanian)_  
-That I would ask you never to leave me.  
_lkn la 'astatie altahaduth eindama tanzur 'iilaya (Arabic)_  
-But I can't speak when you look at me,  
_dus ik kan alleen bidden dat je mijn hart hoort. (Dutch)_  
-So I can only pray that you hear my heart.


	29. Soldat

Oddly enough, the Soldier wasn't cold.

He knew that it was odd that he wasn't cold, but couldn't pinpoint why.

He blinked, chest heaving slightly as he began to slow his heart rate to something steady. Activation put a certain amount of stress on the Soldier's body, and it seemed as though this had gone smoothly.

His vision cleared in the low light, and the Soldier observed Commander's motions across the room. A little female not in any type of uniform; barely dressed at all, in fact. She stood uneasily on bare feet, watching him keenly.

The Soldier's eyes darted briefly around the room, confirming that with the short knife on the table to her right, Commander was armed. Only very technically within the bounds of protocol, but not necessarily sufficient to fulfill its purpose if needed.

Acceptable.

Barely.

"_Dobroye utro, Soldat," _Commander addressed him.

"_Ya gotov otvechat'," _The Soldier replied.

Commander seemed un-phased to be alone with the Soldier. "English, _Soldat_. Confirm Command."

"English. Confirmed." The Soldier found the voice clearer than normal. Usually, the body would be hoarse from the cold air in the stasis chamber, torn from screaming during stabilization, tired.

Commander's eyes fixed on him, not flickering away like so many before her. An open display of strength? Another unusual finding.

"Protect and defend this compound, and the Agents within against the masked assailant. You are not to kill the assailant, but disarm and neutralize for later extraction. Confirm mission parameters."

The Soldier confirmed. "Defend compound and Agents. Disarm and neutralize. Confirmed."

A cry of fear broke feebly through the walls, and Commander's head jerked to the noise. Concern drew harsh lines in her face that had not been present when she looked upon the Soldier. It took a visible effort for Commander to return her attention to the weapon in her presence.

"Retrieve communications gear and ammunition on route to mission application already in progress. Report to channel-" Commander scribbled a number down on the palm of her hand. "-three, when radio is obtained. Reference the evacuation map in the next room to obtain. Deploy."

The Soldier deployed, leaving though the room's only door. The building's evacuation map provided a clear and well-labeled layout for the facility, easily memorized in a moment.

Light footsteps echoed through the cavernous space and the Soldier turned his head, seeing Commander moving in the opposite direction. _Towards the security station, _he guessed from her direction.

It would do no good to linger – anything resembling a hesitant attitude would be punished severely. The faint cries of fear confirmed his route towards the mission application in progress.

The Soldier kept to darkened evening shadows as he approached the compound's arms lockers. No one appeared to be inside. Whatever the current mission status, none had made it as far as the compound's substantial supply of weapons. A few empty lockers emblazoned with nearly garish lockers stood against the far wall.

Entering the room, a row of shiny earpieces glittered for his attention on a shelf. Slender silver pieces, seeming to have more shape for comfort than the utilitarian pieces HYDRA usually presented. They didn't press uncomfortably on the inside of his ear and did not screech as he switched it to the correct channel. "_Soldat_, reporting"

"_Reporting confirmed, Soldat."_ He could hear the relief. "_Welcome back." _

Odd.

Setting the oddness aside, the Soldier tested the latch on the arms lockers. They were firmly secured, most with shiny new padlocks. "Arms are locked," he reported.

"…_what?"_ Commander asked.

He didn't know how to respond to '_what?'_ from a Commander. What additional information was required? Did Commander require the type of lock? The number of locks? The types of arms he needed to retrieve. "Arms," he repeated, a little more slowly, "are locked."

Commander swore sharply, and the Soldier would have flinched if she had been in the same room. "_Hold on," _she ordered.

The Soldier dared not move. There was a rustling through the earpiece and he cringed slightly as it irritated his sensitive hearing. It crackled and went silent, like Commander had changed channels or cut off the receiver. He stood in silence, waiting for orders that allowed him to breathe, to move, to act. His heart beat violently in his chest as a thread of fear began to sing. A fear that he might be left in an action-less void for all time.

The radio crackled again._ "Retrieve the necessary arms by force," _Commander ordered.

He yanked at the locker doors and the steel gave way easily. Far more comfortable in a swiftly-donned tactical belt and holster, the Soldier took swift assessment of his options before gathering a rifle, reaching for armor-piercing rounds out of habit.

"_Nonlethal ammunition, Soldat," _Commander reminded.

The command threw him, jarring him out of his routine so violently he could hear the seizing of gears in his arm as he snatched his hand back. Commander's voice was missing the snap of irritation and the venom of frustration, but instead had sounded like an almost… like a gentle reminder.

"Disarm and neutralize," he repeated the earlier command, already confirmed, to remind himself not to get lost in the muscle-memory of preparation. Disobeying commands would not end well.

"_Confirmed." _

Commander did not comment when he slipped a long knife into the holster on his thigh. Evidently Commander did not consider them lethal enough for comment; a compliment to his careful skill or some neglect on her part? He couldn't be certain, but he knew more than ever that he did not like this Commander.

While some may have preferred her gentler tone and disregard of the minutiae, the Soldier found it distracting. Commander did not provide the direct instructions all at once, but piecemeal instead. Her watchful eye, which should have felt overpowering and authoritarian, simply felt… present.

Upon entering the final hall, she warned of the additionally secured doors. _"Open by force, if necessary."_

Upon breaking the door - at her order - she turned his attention towards the Mission. _"Taskmaster's at your ten o'clock."_

It grated on his nerves beyond the description of words. Too insistently helpful. Too soft. Too much the opposite of the consistent HYDRA Commander behavior that worked above the Soldier.

"_Cover the Agent to your right,"_ she said as he came upon a fallen Agent, bleeding from the shoulder and hiding behind a shrub. He didn't need the reminder. This Commander spoke too much.

The Soldier took swift aim as his Mission rounded the corner. The assailant clearly wasn't hiding - the skull mask and white cape would have made it nearly impossible anyway - and the Soldier would make him regret it.

The rubber-tipped rounds mocked him with their faint report and hardly noticeable kick. The Soldier despised them almost as much as Commander's voice in his ear. Where the rounds should have punched through the assailant's chest, they barely dented the cloth over the armor beneath. Where they should have pierced the grinning skull mask and painted it with blood, it left a little crack along the cheek.

_Useless._ The Soldier allowed the magazine to run empty and discarded the rifle entirely. He had no interest in continuing the charade, unless specifically ordered otherwise.

"_The Agent, Soldat." _The Soldier ground his teeth together as Commander's voice broke his concentration yet again. He grabbed for the fallen Agent's arm; hauling him to his feet in a moment.

"Inside," he growled, turning him by the shoulder and giving him a hard push in the right direction.

Instead of looking fearful, as he would have expected, the Agent looked relieved. "Thank you, Sergeant Barnes." _Barnes?_ They were mistaken.

"_Focus, Soldat." _The Soldier ground his teeth together.

Commander was correct, of course. Even with the reprimand, her voice remained steadfastly reassuring and gentle; unnecessarily so. The Soldier did not need a padded coddling from a commander, but clear and certain direction.

This Commander would not last long within HYDRA's rigid system.

Recovered from the brief shock of receiving a full magazine of rubber rounds to the face and torso, his Mission approached slowly. He twirled a long sword lazily in his right hand, as if testing its weight. The shield on his opposite arm shone in the flickering light, throwing distracting shafts of light.

"You're a hard man to find, Soldier," Taskmaster said.

The Soldier did not reply; there was no need. Access to the Soldier was kept under strict confidence. However, the Soldier had doubts about the future viability of the operation if all his future Commanders continued to be as inept as his current one.

Taskmaster swing the sword again in an arc, glancing around far too casually. "Where's that crazy bit o' yours, huh? The one with the...ehhh - you know?" The Mission raised his shield arm to draw a gloved finger across his throat.

The Soldier's eyes narrowed slightly. Could he mean Commander? There was nothing wrong with her throat, from his brief memory. Some other Agent then? None could be classified as 'his', though.

"Oh yeah," Taskmaster's head bobbed. "Said you wouldn't know... Hm." He sighed. "Oh well." With no additional warning save for a swift tensing of form, he threw the heavy shield like a discus.

The Soldier caught it in his left, the steel grating against steel in an unpleasant way. He coiled to return the assault. _"Keep the shield,"_ Commander barked, and the Soldier staggered with misspent tension. _"It's a better shield than your arm against that sword."_

Almost on cue, Taskmaster lunged forward with the sword. He struck with a sure hand, the steel-on-steel throwing sparks from the force.

The Soldier hesitated, for even as his mind presented opportunity after opportunity to maim and destroy, he had been ordered to use non-lethal force and was struggling to find his footing with those unusual orders.

The Soldier punched instead for the assailant's ribs, metal arm flashing out from behind the cover of the shield. Crushed ribs and bruised lungs would be a satisfactory method of incapacitation.

Quick as lightning, the sword flashed through the air again, striking at a deep angle into the vulnerable joints of the arm, but did not dig into the delicate robotics as he might have expected. The panels shifted in a slightly new way – bending instead of popping out of place.

The Soldier twisted his arm as he drew back, grabbing for the steel in a swift attempt to disarm his Mission. The keening screech - sword against arm, pressed tight against shield - grew exponentially louder.

Seizing the faint retreat as opportunity, Taskmaster pushed forward into the Soldier's grip, sliding the sword up and around the edge of the shield. The Soldier jerked his head back to avoid losing his head, though the sword still caught the flesh along the cheek.

"_Be careful!" _Commander barked in his ear, the sharp cry distracting and unhelpful. How much more careful could he be without losing his head?

Between breaths, he lost the brief hold he'd gained on the upper hand. Taskmaster dropped and pressed up with the shield, twisting the Soldier's arm out of the bracers and cracking the edge up against his jaw, sending him stumbling backwards as his Mission pressed in for the kill.

Preferring a further disadvantage to being dead, the Soldier wrenched his arm deep into the painful angle, ignoring the flash of pain as ligaments tore in his shoulder, but broke out of the lethal radius of the sword.

The Soldier could taste blood in his mouth and could feel it running down the side of his neck. Ignoring it to focus on forcing his right shoulder back into proper alignment, the Soldier watched his opponent carefully as he took a moment to heal.

Rather than looking at the Soldier, Taskmaster's attention was fixed on a little silver spot in the grass. Bending briefly to pick it up, he rolled an all-too familiar shape between gloved fingers. "That's cheating," he drawled.

The Soldier's hand flew to his ear, but found a crucial piece of gear missing there. The well-fitted earpiece that had slid so smoothly into his ear had slid just as smoothly out again with barely-perceptible sensation. In the grapple, the Soldier hasn't noticed at all.

Taskmaster crushed it in his fist, letting the delicate components scatter into the grass. "Hm," he hummed. "Guess you're right."

Right about what? The Soldier hadn't spoken.

Confusion gave way to hair-raising alarm as Taskmaster grabbed a little cylinder from his belt and lobbed it gently in his direction. The Soldier pulled the shield off its bracers, and covered the grenade in a protective steel dome as it tumbled to his feet.

He pressed down hard, ready for the concussive force that should have come not a moment later.

No explosion came.

"Boo," the Mission chuckled.

Movement flashed at the periphery of his vision, and the Soldier's head snapped up to track it.

A second cylinder, tossed through the air exploded scant inches from his face; white magnesium flared against his senses and his body's ears popped into cacophonous silence, his sense of smell flooded with ozone.

He stumbled, covering his head with his arm only out of reflex as he felt the movement of air brush against his skin. Pressure sensors in the arm signaled the blocking of a death-blow meant for his neck, and the hot report from his cheek confirmed the proximity of the blade.

Alone in the terrible void, the Soldier drew his knife as he squinted and blinked rapidly, trying to will the body to recover faster from the flash-bang. Shadows emerged first like shapes in the deepest London Fog.

The Soldier paused, confused as a taste of something bitter washed over his tongue. How did he know what London Fog looked like? He couldn't remember, couldn't… Reflex saved him again, the darkening of the foggy shadows warning that death was striking from above. Knife caught sword, turning a fatal blow into a glancing scatter of sparks.

Drifting through the rapidly clearing the fog, the cracked skull mask looked like the God of Death coming to charge the Soldier for all of the blood on his hands.

Aware of the silence pressing into his skull, more aware than ever that he had no stabilizing force, the Soldier would have happily listened to his awful Commander rattle along her terrible advice for the momentary usefulness of a watchful eye.

The Soldier coiled in on himself, switching the knife between hands as needed to block blows from the sword until the blade shattered under the pressure. It didn't feel like fear as he lost his weapon, but it did feel familiar.

It felt like an old, old memory. One that should have been suppressed for much longer with a proper stabilization. It had been darker, colder, and he'd been far less prepared, but he remembered how he'd survived that time. The Soldier kicked out with both boots, striking at the side of Taskmaster's knee and sending him sprawling.

Taskmaster plunged his sword into the ground to try and stop his fall, like the strangest cane, leaving the brief opportunity to disarm him. The Solder used his body like a battering ram, slamming a shoulder into Taskmaster's side.

A short victory, the Soldier had to release his mission immediately as a fresh blade stabbed into his shoulder. Not so kind as to leave a weapon in easy reach, Taskmaster yanked the knife out as he rolled away and sprang to his feet.

_Shoulder. Jaw. Face. Eyes and ears. Shoulder again. _

The pain could hardly compare to the host of complaints he'd accumulated over the years. But as he stood, this pain too felt familiar. It tasted like sickness and tight lungs and felt like a heavy weight in his chest. Even with empty hands he could feel the weight of a heavy tool gripped in his fists, a declaration that he would stand and fight to the death.

That time, he'd survived with stubbornness. Stubbornness, and a light that emerged from the darkness and reached for him to push away the fever on his brow. Instead of a vision, now, he had a sharp sword within reach.

In a delightfully spiteful gesture, the Soldier twirled the long blade in the manner of his opponent as he pulled it from the compacted earth. He raised the sword to strike as he had been struck, leaving his opponent only the shorter blade to defend himself.

_Disarm and neutralize._ The Soldier snarled, throwing away the sword lest he be tempted to use it beyond his mission's parameters.

"Listen here, _fucker_-" Through the hazy fuzz of his returning hearing, his Mission snarled in anger.

But the Soldier wouldn't give him the chance.

He punched with the force that tasted like tight lungs. It lacked any of the form that usually came from training and repetitive work that helped to refine, but that was where the power came from – the last vestiges of a desperate man.

He slashed with the dagger in a way that felt like a time he almost drowned. None of the careful arcs and twisty spins from one who had lived with blades their whole life, but the sharp and jerky movements of a man who'd recently run out of air and could barely see straight.

He head-butted the mask, snapping Taskmaster's head back in a way that smelled like a distant alley in the furthest and deepest parts of a memory he shouldn't have had anymore.

The combination flooded in - through a door that stabilization should have locked, but someone seemed to have forgotten to actually shut this time.

His head hurt with each strike - a stab through the brain as his body remembered another way to fight for his life - _mine, my life, a thing to preserve, a place to go back to - _but the completion of his mission was so close he could taste it through the magnesium that still burned in his mouth.

As quickly as victory could be tasted, it turned to ash. Something changed in the air. Fear.

The tight lungs were turned against him, with none of the trouble of memory as Taskmaster copied him move for move, without any of the injuries or handicaps of the crippling mental agony. The grinning skull mask mocked him, turning even the advantages he'd gained from past weakness against him.

The Soldier slashed with the dagger but again found himself combating a mirror that swiftly disarmed him. They grappled for control, the knife moving ever-closer to his face, and none of the twists and lunges that had saved him before seemed to allow for his escape now.

Trapped between death and command, the Soldier tasted fear. Would it be better, he wondered briefly, to die? Would it be better to die than to kill his opponent and face the punishment that would follow? The handicap of _disarm and neutralize_ and _non-lethal rounds, Soldat_ left him almost unarmed from the start. But – now with the edge of the knife next to his eye – he couldn't help but think even briefly that it might be time for the end.

The screech of a bullet sang by his face, the sound barely making it through the fuzz in his senses, striking the opponent squarely in the shoulder and stunning him for a moment.

A moment was all it took; the Soldier grappled to disarm him, and wrapped an arm tightly around his neck, pinning down flailing arms with a leg. Dirtiest of fighting - _pick on someone your own size_ \- and while the Soldier could last a good long while without air, Taskmaster crumbled in the usual amount of time.

The Soldier let the heavy body fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes, sinking to his knees in sudden exhaustion. _Russian potatoes make the strongest vodkas_, someone purred in his memory.

The Soldier shook his head, trying to clear his ears and his raging mind. His chest heaved as his heartrate resisted slowing; resisted accepting the victory. Too swiftly achieved, it took a moment of standing in silence to remember what his next steps were supposed to be.

_At mission completion, await orders or extraction. _The Soldier could barely hear, and had lost his communication radio. If he couldn't get commands, would he be punished for incorrect actions? His racing heart threatened to betray him.

_Breathe._

The voice. The voice had Soldier's fear and tension drained away, grateful beyond words. He dropped his head, focusing on the voice inside.

_Come back to me._

Back to where? Directionless, the Soldier's mind raced at the speed of his heart. It felt wrong to stand in the darkened lawn just staring at the grass, but he so deathly feared to be wrong.

Boots appeared in his lowered vision, and the tip of a rifle. Startled, too distracted to have heard the approach, the Soldier's head snapped up.

It was the Agent he'd pulled from the shrubs - he'd returned with reinforcements and weapons. His expression appeared concerned for the Soldier, and he could just make out him asking _'are you alright, Sir?' _through the tinny humming signaling the return of the body's hearing.

The Soldier could almost be relieved that there were witnesses to his victory. The feeling lingered at the edges of his mind, mingling with the scattered memories that beat painfully on the inside of his skull. The Soldier watched as the Agents swiftly restrained Taskmaster's limp form, hauling him back into the compound.

No one moved to collect him; in fact they seemed to be looking at him as if he should tell them what happened next. Odd.

"Sir?" the Agent asked him again, clearer still.

The Soldier didn't have that title, he was _Asset_ or _Soldat_. The Soldier could not correct him, however; even the lowest Agent was better than the Weapon himself. The Soldier could only stare, hoping that the Agent would correct himself.

He did not; he shifted in place, adjusting his grip on the newly-acquired rifle and glancing around nervously. "Did she find you, Sir?"

Finally, a direct question. The Soldier was allowed to answer direct questions, but only if he had understood exactly what was being asked. He considered risking asking for further clarification. Further consideration was cut off as through the pounding in his ears, the rushing silence that faded too-slowly through the body's damaged ears, he could hear gunshots.

Even through the slowed processing of his overtaxed mind, the Soldier could more than easily calculate the source of the gunfire.

The source retraced his footsteps back to activation, to words too-kind and gentle to be correct.

To bare feet that had turned right when he'd turned left; moving almost silently across a well-polished floor.

_Come back to me, _the voice called.

The Soldier seized the rifle from the Agent's hands and plunged back into the darkness.

* * *

A/N: Y'all better fuckin' _appreciate the hell out of this chapter_. I have never been able to write fight scenes which is why they're so violently avoided in my stories. Sadly, I knew this story needed at least two – the initial fight with Taskmaster, and then the final showdown. This chapter's name in the outline was literally "I'm gonna have to write a fight scene and it's gonna suck". I'm not totally satisfied, to be quite honest, but I think this is pretty much the best I can do.

I cackled to myself when I realized that the Soldier wouldn't really appreciate Alice's different style from a typical rigid HYDRA commander. It changed a few things about this chapter and the ones that follow.

I love my reviewers! TrilbyBard, Omega-66, SabakuNoGaara426, BlackPachirisu, SomebodyWhoCares, ThatMysteriousSlime, LisaPark, PistolHattersButtercup, TimeLordsRule, LoveFiction2019, tuckerjnp1, Flours, nerdalertwarning, rosafern, sakuya06, TikiKiki, thegirlthatneverwrites, 0peneyez, huffle-bibin, Ravyn Moon 1313, x-EarthAlchemist-x, Sulia Serafine, and haze47.

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	30. War of the Angels

Alice held her breath as the Soldier stared at her. She'd never come face to face with this part of him - not freshly activated, anyway. She'd always had the benefit of time on her side. He was waiting for her, of course, and Alice collected her thoughts as fast as possible. "English, _Soldat_. Confirm Command."

"English. Confirmed." A voice without affect came out of his mouth.

Alice nodded a tiny bit, scrutinizing the Soldier's face. "Protect and defend this compound and the Agents within against the masked assailant. You are not to kill the assailant but disarm and neutralize for later extraction. Confirm mission parameters."

"Defend compound and Agents. Disarm and neutralize. Confirmed." The Soldier barely blinked as he stared back. He had the same face as Bucky; the same eyes, the same scruffy beard, and the same shape of the mouth. As she stared, she tried to will time to run in reverse; to bring back the mind of the man she loved. _Are you in there, _she wanted to ask.

A cry of fear broke feebly through the walls, and Alice's head jerked to the noise. Her stomach twisted. _Focus, Alice. _Alice forced herself to return to the task at hand. If she tried to bring her Bucky back now, then she'd be condemning those kids to an agonizing death. She knew first-hand how frightened they would be.

"Retrieve communications gear and ammunition on route to mission application already in progress. Report to channel-" Alice scribbled the number on her palm with a pen someone had left in the empty room, just in case, "-three, when radio is obtained. Reference the evacuation map in the next room to obtain. Deploy."

The Soldier left instantly, deploying through the room's door. Alice let out a rush of air, feeling suddenly very drained and very lonely. _Well,_ she thought_, you'd better find the other half of that radio._

Alice grabbed the knife Bucky had left her and clutched it to her chest. _Better than nothing_. Alice also couldn't be sure if the Soldier somehow kept track of whether or not his Commander was armed beyond the first activation. Better safe than sorry.

Alice left through the open door and glanced at the evacuation map, tracing the route to the communication hub for the building. Retreating steps followed the Soldier down the hall and Alice was surprised she didn't consider following him. Her mind genuinely didn't consider it.

_I need some shoes_, she thought instead. Wanda's room was between her current location and the hub, and she was sure the Sokovian wouldn't mind too much. Alice cast a last glance at the Soldier's silhouette in the flickering light before she swiftly headed in the opposite direction.

She took the briefest side-trip into Wanda's room, grabbing the first pair of boots she could find and shoving her feet into them, tucking the knife against her calf so she didn't accidentally stab someone when rounding a corner.

Some of the compound's lights stayed on, flickering as if beckoning her to walk further down the corridor. She glanced fervently, afraid of every corner and blinking red light from the security cameras.

"Why are you all still working?" Alice asked the blinking lights. "The lights and controls are fucked, but all the cameras are still working?" It gave her some hope that she might be able to be a watchful eye in the sky for Bucky, but she couldn't dwell too long on the reasoning - she needed to get to the communication hub.

The sounds of her unfamiliar boots rattled along the echoing hallway, punctuated by the lights dying behind her as she worked quickly through the maze.

Alice paused, glancing behind her. The lights along her path had all gone out. She turned slowly, looking at the path ahead. Lights remained lit, although sporadically. _Leading the way_, Alice realized. _But to what?_

If she'd had the luxury of time, she would have stopped fully to consider the facts. Well-practiced in falling on the wrong side of secrets and deception, she would have worked her way back to the logical conclusion. But Alice didn't have the luxury of time.

_I don't have a choice_, she thought. It sent a chill down her spine. Alice had to tamp down her fear and proceed, praying to whatever gods might be listening that she wasn't going to be ambushed. She was more aware than ever of every long shadow, every creaky floorboard, and the eerie shapes drawn in the low moonlight.

Mercifully, she reached the communications hub unmolested. Alice pushed the unlocked door open and sighed in rapid relief as she was greeted by a half-functioning bay of security screens. Most of them were dark, but the ten or so that were operational showed desperate chaos developing.

"Radio," Alice reminded herself, snapping her fingers. She spun in place, scanning the shelves. _Radio!_ She thought triumphantly, grabbing one from the shelf, turning it on and switching it to channel three.

"Okay," she muttered, sitting down and rolling close to the center of the wide array of screens. "Okay… where is everyone…" Alice drew back her hair and secured it with a spare rubber band she found in a pile on the desk.

The radio crackled, making her jump. "_Soldat, reporting."_

Alice struggled to figure out what button made the radio talk back. "Reporting confirmed, _Soldat."_ Alice breathed a sigh of relief. "Welcome back." Alice put her head down on the desk, stilling her trembling hands. "Okay…" she breathed, "we've got this."

The radio crackled again. "_Arms are locked," _the Soldier reported.

Alice looked up. "...what?" she asked into the radio. Had she jinxed their success already?

"_Arms are locked," _the Soldier repeated.

_Well, that's not fucking helpful. _Alice swore sharply. "Hold on." Her eyes darted from screen to screen, trying to find him. _There you are_. He was staring at a wide bay of arms lockers, all secured by large, shiny padlocks. "Motherfucking compound and your motherfucking locks," she grumbled. "Okay - think, think…" she shuffled the papers on the desk as if it would help. _Fucking fuck, we don't have time for this!_

Alice dropped the radio, swore, and punched the transmitter button as she moved the papers back into their stack. "Retrieve the necessary arms by force."

_I have no idea if that will work_. Alice held her breath, staring at the screen as the Soldier contemplated the locks. She sucked in air between her teeth as he reached for a metal door, and released it with relief as he yanked it open in one swift motion. "I'm gonna pass out if I keep this up," she murmured to the empty room.

As the Soldier selected his weapon, Alice glanced at the other screens to get a sense of what was happening outside. She could see flashes of Taskmaster's white cloak, and bodies running to get away from him. Every functioning screen was full of a panicked action.

Alice blinked, then counted pointed to each screen in sequence, confirming that each operating camera was watching the chaos below. No empty halls. No idle laundry machines. No empty beds.

Alice frowned. _That's not right, and I don't know why._

In her third review of the screens, Alice saw the Soldier reach for the huge armor-piercing rounds and switched her transmitter on again. "Nonlethal ammunition, _Soldat."_

His hand snapped away from the ammunition. He stared at it and Alice could almost see him thinking. "..._Disarm and neutralize," _he murmured.

"Confirmed," she said, as gently as possible.

It was awful, watching from so far away. It would only have been worse, she reasoned, standing beside him. She could sense the frustration and confusion - the break of protocol that she was sure she created with every word, and even the mission itself… she didn't need to be a HYDRA expert to know that they were operating well outside of the Soldier's comfort zone.

"Open by force, if necessary," Alice recommended as he approached the exterior door. So many odd things happening, it wouldn't have shocked her for random doors to be unlocked or locked. The Soldier broke the door open easily.

Alice rolled across the floor, following his progress outdoors to a screen across the room. "Taskmaster's at your ten o clock," she said. She scanned the newer screens, searching for anything that could help.

She spotted someone hiding in the bushes nursing a deep wound to the shoulder and recognized his face even through the slightly blurry footage. _It's Freddy,_ she realized; the young recruit who'd dropped out of the final trial to help a teammate. _He didn't even get a chance to get out in time._ "Cover the Agent to your right," she ordered immediately.

The Soldier fired to cover him, but the non-lethal rounds did hardly anything to force Taskmaster back, but Freddy didn't move. "The Agent, Soldat," she ordered again, worrying that the Soldier might leave the failed Agent in the bushes to die.

But no, the younger man was hauled to his feet and pushed in the direction of the compound. Freddy said something, but Alice couldn't hear what it was. She did, however, see the Soldier pause. A confused tilt of his head, a slackening of posture.

_Oh, _she thought, _there you are. _Alice's eyes watered and she smiled painfully to herself. _How did you ever fool them into believing you weren't in there?_ Not twenty minutes activated and she could plainly see her Bucky under all the conditioning.

It took her a second to realize he'd dropped the mostly-useless rifle entirely as he approached Taskmaster's position. _So fucking contrary_, she scowled.

Regretfully, Alice thumbed the radio's transmitter. "Focus, Soldat," she reminded. She hadn't wanted to. She wanted to see Bucky burst through all that conditioning in a moment, tell Taskmaster to just go pound sand, and they'd run off to Tahiti together. _Nice fantasy, _Alice sighed_, but now you need to focus as well._

As the Soldier didn't leave his transmitter open, Alice couldn't hear what Taskmaster said. She could only watch as Taskmaster shifted his body from side to side, spun the sword, and gestured by drawing a finger across his throat.

It dawned on her. _He's talking about me_. She wanted to smile but her face wouldn't cooperate, as it wasn't actually funny. _Joke's on him, I guess; the Soldier doesn't remember that stuff. _

She jumped in place as Taskmaster threw the shield and Bucky caught it with very little apparent effort. He coiled to throw it back and Alice quickly ordered: "Keep the shield; it's a better shield than your arm against that sword." She winced as she saw him stumble slightly; her order having thrown off his internal rhythm.

She set the radio down and clenched her fists, trying to keep from interrupting like that again. What if something awful happened? What if she got him killed because she was trying to interfere with the fight?

Alice chewed on her fingers as the Soldier struck, and Taskmaster parried with the sword. She tasted blood as the Soldier tried to grab at the sword and then tried to force the sword away with the shield. She cried out in fear as the sword came close - too close - to the Soldier's face. Out of instinct, she grabbed the radio, barking "Be careful!"

It just seemed to make things worse. The shield was forced up against his jaw and the Soldier nearly dislocated his arm to escape.

_Why is this going so wrong?_ Alice questioned, drawing her knees up tight to her chest, trying to give herself some form of comfort. _This was supposed to make it easier to fight him, not harder! The Soldier is supposed to be a death-machine- _ Alice slapped her forehead. Of course it wasn't working. She'd ordered him not to do the one thing he'd been trained to do.

Alice grabbed the radio, pressing the transmitter. _"Soldat,"_ she called, "Mission update: lethal force authorized." Alice gripped the radio tightly, holding her breath as she looked for some kind of reaction.

The Soldier did not respond. Didn't so much as flinch. _"Soldat_, confirm mission update," Alice tried.

Nothing.

Alice leaned close to the screen, watching carefully as Taskmaster slowly picked up something from the ground. "Oh, _fuck," _Alice swore.

She gripped the edge of the desk as if it would help control the situation on the screen. "Come on, get it back-"

Taskmaster lobbed something to the Soldier - _a grenade, maybe - _and he covered it with the shield as a containment method. _That's smart_, Alice thought approvingly.

"_Oh, fuck!_" she cried as the screen flared white, throwing off her vision with how close she'd been staring. She rubbed at her eyes, blinking the spots away.

In two seconds, everything had gone to shit. The Soldier was barely holding his own. Alice had a decision to make. She could sit there and continue to be the most useless Commander the Soldier had ever known, or...

She stood up jerkily from the chair and rapidly checked the shelves, grabbing a flashlight and jabbing the buttons until it turned on. Alice charged into the pitch-black halls, lit only in brief corners where moonlight stole through skylights. She stumbled over potted plants that she'd moved into the sunshine, clenching her jaw to keep from swearing into the darkness.

_Focus_, she repeated the mantra, _focus. Don't get lost. Now is not the day to get lost_.

As she approached the armory lockers Alice could hear the sound of hushed voices - but too many voices to be hushed. She pulled the knife out of her boot as she rounded the last corner and prepared for the worst.

Young faces squinted into the light of her flashlight, and Alice lowered her knife. Fifty or so of the new agents had crowded around the door of the armory. Some were bloodied and others looked to be on the verge of collapse.

"Are we waiting for the end of the world before we try applying our training?!" Alice barked over the crowd.

"The locks are all changed!" someone cried as the crowd parted before her. _Who would do that? _

Smart rows of shiny new padlocks kept the weapons under strict care, save for the one that Bucky had ripped open with his hands. Alice looked around fervently, leaving the room in a rush. She didn't know what she was looking for - magic keys, maybe? Any one of the _real_ heroes that walked the halls?

"Ma'am?" a frantic voice called. "What do we do?"

'_Why the actual fuck would I know?'_ she nearly snapped. She'd never had any useful training beyond Cable's crash course in field medicine and the little that she retained from Xavier's school.

Alice spotted the red firebox on the opposite wall and it sparked a violent idea. _Fight fire with fire. _She punched through the safety glass and seized the fire axe. _Or in this case, steel with steel._

"_Move_, "Alice barked, hefting the axe. The kids moved quite smartly out of her way.

Single strikes of the axe did very little damage against the steel lattice of the lockers, but Alice wasn't about to let that stop her. Repeated strikes and a dogged determination left no other road than success. _I have to_.

Determination broke her through the locker door, and she reached in without hesitation to grab the first rifle within reach and pocketed a handful of rounds to match. Sharp edges from the steel cut at her hands and arms, and she didn't so much as flinch.

Drenched with sweat for the effort, Alice threw the axe to the nearest agent. "Here," she tossed the axe, "help yourselves."

The agents moved out of her way as she strode from the armory, checking the barrel of the rifle as she walked and sliding the ammunition into place one round at a time. Mixtures of fear and reverent awe painted their expressions, in some barely making it through a coating of blood.

Alice's steps slowed. She turned, walking backward to call instructions into the crowd without losing her pace. _"Get them to the medical bay!" _she ordered. _"It's on backup power and should still be working!"_

It would have to be enough.

Alice turned and ran down the hall, mentally mapping the nearest stairwell. She took the stairs two at a time, nearly slipping on the top step. Alice ran up the stairs and burst out into the top floor, looking for a good window as a vantage point by opening doors at random and looking inside.

Bathrooms. _No._

Janitor Closet. _Definitely not._

Conference Room with large windows. _Bingo._

Alice slowed her pace as she moved through the room, carefully choosing the best position to set up a firing stand. The windows opened only very slightly at the bottom, probably just to let in a breeze, but it would be enough to shoot out of.

Dropping to her stomach, Alice turned out the rest along the barrel and tucked the stock to her shoulder. She slid the very tip of the barrel out the window to save her ears and shuffled in place a little place to get settled. It felt like stalling, but careful preparation always paid out in the end.

Alice opened the cover on the sight and tilted her head to look through with her right eye. She drew her rifle carefully across the field, searching for her targets. A flash of white darted across the scope, and Alice steadied, pulling back on the magnification.

Taskmaster and Bucky, grappling for control of a knife. The heat of anger and the cold jolt of fear mixed in her chest, fighting the same battle she could see below. Rage aimed for Taskmaster's head, determined to make a killing shot. Fear slowed her hand, giving reason time to catch up.

_Don't kill him_, reason whispered_, he's one of us, even if he doesn't know it._

Just like Bucky, Tony Masters had very little control over what was happening. If she acted out of anger or even fear, she would finally become the monster she had always worried could be inside her. She could feel that righteous anger - it felt _good_ to be in the controlling position, to be so close to taking absolute power over the moment that had haunted her.

_I don't want to be that person_, she thought. _I don't want to be the person that enjoys that._ She could feel herself standing at the precipice of a choice. To know, in the moment of it happening, that she stood at a crossroads of the rest of her life; it would be a defining moment for everything that followed.

Alice shifted her aim slightly - ever so slightly - to Taskmaster's knee. It was well away from Bucky's position and had very little chance of killing him beyond blood loss. She'd easily be able to get down to ground level and patch him up before that happened, though.

The rage seethed quietly, and fear burbled darkly, but Alice's conscience sang in bright harmonies. Alice lined up her shot, taking a steadying rested her finger on the trigger, and took a smooth breath, squeezing gently on the exhale.

Alice's body jerked as her shoulder exploded into hot agony and her shot went wildly off-target. She saw stars and tasted a bitter, acrid tang in her mouth. She tried to breathe, gasping, but searing fire rushed through her lungs.

Sagging sideways, Alice clutched at her shoulder and ribbons of blood ran through her fingers. Confused, she touched it again, confirming that she was losing blood at a steadily decreasing rate onto the floor.

_I've been shot, _she thought. Her skin tingled as her mutation got to work on the injury.

If she'd been shot, there must have been a shooter. Alice rolled onto her back and tried to wield the rifle with one hand, to defend herself against the shooter.

Alice gaped in surprise. She'd been expecting maybe another white cloak, or some additional villain bought by HYDRA, but not SHIELD agent blue.

Alice squinted as if maybe it was just the low light tricking her. "Merced-?"

Alice jerked again as a bullet drove into her exposed gut. Hot sharp fingers dug around her insides, pulling organs that had no business being involved into the argument with her shoulder as to which gunshot hurt more.

"I'm sorry, Alice, but I can't let you hurt him." A boot kicked the rifle out of Alice's reach. "You are an unfortunate casualty, as are the children, but I have to keep the future in mind. The Soldier is a threat to the future of SHIELD, and I can't allow him to operate freely."

Alice's eyes leaked tears that had no basis in emotion. Her body didn't like being in pain, even though the pain was an old bedfellow. _I can do this_, she ground her teeth together and forced the thought out. _I can fix this. _She just needed to stall.

Just like with Taskmaster, Alice could play the patient game to gain her advantage. Alice could feel her body fighting the blood loss and pain, quickly catching up to the damage. "Mercedes, he's not-"

Merced shot two more bullets into Alice's gut and one into each knee, shattering them instantly. As Alice screamed in agony, Merced crouched in front of the weeping woman. "I would admire your attempts to delay if they weren't so obvious. I know what you are, _mutant_. Stark keeps excellent notes on his curiosities."

Alice felt fire flood through her veins; hot rage powering her through agony. She curled up in a ball like one would expect someone trying to protect their squishier insides to do. She was thinking clearly for the moment, but if Mercedes continued her assault, Alice would soon be running on borrowed time.

The cold math of blood loss would catch up. One gunshot? Give her ten to twenty and she'd be right as rain. Ten to twenty gunshots? Alice didn't know how long that would take to heal. So she had to be ready for the worst.

It was the fastest plan ever devised while in the fetal position. Carefully, slowly, she unsheathed the knife tucked into her boot. "We didn't do anything," she whispered, keeping her voice intentionally soft.

Merced grabbed a handful of the back of Alice's shirt, dragging her towards the window. The delicate chain around Alice's neck cut into her skin like a finely honed blade but popped free as Merced threw Alice's weakened body.

"Look at it!" Merced barked, shoving Alice's face into the glass window, cracking it slightly from the force. "Look at the way the Soldier moves - is that really someone worth saving? _He's just a weapon!_"

Close enough to kill, Alice made her best move. She plunged the knife hilt-deep into Merced's thigh. In Alice's head, Mercedes would have fallen to her knees and Alice could have clawed her eyes out. In Alice's plan, it had at least put them on even ground for the rest of the fight.

It barely seemed to faze the seasoned Agent.

Merced struck her across the face with the power of a heavyweight boxer, throwing her into the already cracked glass and blowing out the compromised window, scattering glass across the floor.

"You're lazy, untrained, _worthless_," Merced spat. "Why you? Why do you get to have it all?" She struck Alice with the butt of the pistol, cracking her jaw. Alice heard the brittle crack of bone, and the tingling sensation of her mutation took longer to develop than it should.

_I'm running out of time. _Alice heaved for air, fighting the spots dancing across her vision. The knife clattered away into a dark corner. Her mind started to drift, keeping track of odd things as her brain sought to distract her from the pain.

"I've stayed for longer than you can imagine – keeping him steady, keeping him focused – you haven't _suffered enough_ to get what should have been mine!" Merced fired the pistol into Alice's gut. _Kidney. _"I'm the one that knew what had to be done!" She fired again. _Stomach. _"I'm the only one who was willing to _do_ what had to be done!"

Alice coughed and tasted blood. Fleeting, healing rapidly, struggling to keep up with the increasing collection of injuries. "I'm sorry," she croaked.

Merced started to agree. "You should be sorry-"

"I'm sorry… you were alone," Alice finished, wheezing. "Must have… been… so lonely." Her heart hurt for Mercedes, like seeing an old photo of yourself from a miserable vacation. _I think_, her thoughts wandered, _I'm out of time. _

Merced's face twisted with fury and she fired - three times, now, into Alice's chest. _Lung. _"You're one of _them!_" _ Liver. _"You think that everything can have a sweet and peaceful ending!" _Spleen. _

"You think…" Merced laughed bitterly, twirling the pistol as Alice writhed on the ground. "You think you're really the ones making the hard decisions. You don't even know! You're as bad as all the rest. You think you know better. You think you _know _what it's like."

"You're all so ready for the world to be an easy place; a _trusting_ place." Merced crouched in front of Alice, tapping her pistol against the wounded woman's blood-soaked chest. "If you knew what it was like to kill someone because they _might_ be a threat to the future, you would have seen this coming."

Alice coughed and could feel the blood rising in her throat. _There's a familiar feeling. _"I do know," Alice gasped. A shadow interrupted the flickers of light cast through the door. Even going slightly sideways, Alice could recognize the foggy shape. _Am I imagining it? _It wouldn't have been unreasonable. "I know," she gasped around burbles of blood, "that it hurts… more… to stop… and you never... want to."

"Well, then you're a monster just like me." Merced raised the pistol and pointed it at Alice's heart. "Even monsters deserve peace."

A glint of polished steel and the smooth stride of a predator drew Alice's tired attention. Her vision narrowed as her mutation raced to recover the extensive damage but started to run out of energy to do so. It demanded she sleep, even as the gleaming tip of a rifle broke into the light and aimed for the back of Merced's head.

"Don't," Alice moaned. She wasn't even certain she said it until Mercedes replied.

Merced sneered, disgusted with her. "That's what it takes to make you beg?"

"Don't," she repeated, holding up a hand. _"Please." _Her hand shook, and she wasn't looking at Mercedes.

The Soldier repositioned his rifle; taking his aim from dead-center in the back of Merced's head to just slightly to her left.

Alice's hand dropped as her clock ran out. _Dinner's done_, she thought, _time to take the bake out of the oven._

The Soldier fired; deafening and disorienting Merced. She dropped the pistol and clapped hands over her ears. The Soldier stomped between Merced's shoulder blades, sending her sprawling.

Alice lost her perspective on the fight as her head rolled on her neck, flopping to one side as her strength reached low tide.

Her gaze fixed on the broken window, counting shards of glass.

_One for sorrow, two for joy._

"No!" She heard Merced cry.

_Three for a girl, four for a boy._

Scuffling.

A crack of bone.

_Five for silver, six for gold._

Silence.

A crunch of boots on broken glass.

_Seven for a secret, never to be told._

A hand moved her jaw and her field of vision, spinning the room to draw her attention upwards. The Soldier knelt over her, eyes searching but cold. "Commander," he addressed her. Blurry and indistinct, Alice couldn't read the expression on his face well enough to call it anything beyond confused.

Alice reached for his hand as her vision narrowed and her hand shook from the effort. She looked for the right words, the perfect words to express her confusion and her exhaustion. The sucking wounds in her chest punctuated the words oddly as it forced her to take the shallowest of breaths. "Hey, Dodo… can we... go home?"

Alice's body closed her eyes without her permission, and the sounds of the world fell away.

She could feel the release of gravity; a weightlessness that she struggled to fight on the inside. The rushing of the last of her blood moving through her veins sounded like the gentle rolls of the ocean breaking against the shore.

The waves slowed as time stretched out, and the roars of the ocean called quieter and quieter, pulling her along the wave of mystery until the sound and her thoughts barely rose above a whisper.

She could not be certain if she was rising or falling as the world drifted further and further away, but at least the falling was warm.

* * *

A/N: WAR OF THE FRIGGIN ANGELS

This chapter scared me more than the last one. It's not a fight scene and yet it is, and it's a culmination of… so, so many things. And if I thought writing a fight scene was hard, writing someone _watching_ a fight scene is so much worse. A whole lot of me going back to Ch. 29 like _Jesus fuck what order did this all happen in again?_

Have you all heard of Inktober? Evidently, I've got a reader who's going to be doing some Alice pieces during her run. Pretty excited to see them tbh. If there's interest in seeing her work I'll ask if she's comfortable with me releasing her Instagram handle with the next chapter.

I love my reviewers! (If you don't see your name, there's a weird error happening right now where new reviews aren't posting): SabakuNoGaara426, BlackPachirisu, Books1993, TikiKiki, til the end of the line, PistolHattersButtercup, TheCauldron, Omega-66, SomebodyWhoCares, TimeLordsRule, Flours, aComplicatedCat, LisaPark, Hollarious969, nerdalertwarning, haze47, LoveFiction2019, rosafern, and Sulia Serafine!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	31. Escape Velocity

"Hey – are you going to eat your cookie?" Tony looked up from the worktable stationed in the rear of Jet One to see Rhodey pointing to his bag lunch, still stowed in an overhead bin.

"No; I don't like the taste of cyanide," he replied, looking down again at the new repulsor schematics he'd been focused on.

"Can I have it?" Rhodey asked, already reaching for the brown paper sack.

"You really want to add another thirty minutes to your already _lengthy _exercise routine?" Tony shot back, ignoring the question as Rhodey helped himself to the cookie.

"At least I work out," Rhodey shot back, "you're gonna emerge from your lab someday all wasted and pale. When was the last time you saw sunlight?"

Tony shut down the screen as he clearly wasn't going to get anything else done. "You don't call building my suit, _your_ suit, and all of these fun toys working out? I slaved all day over a hot fabricator for you."

"Your ego's getting a workout," Rhodey replied, brushing cookie crumbs from his shirt, "try not skipping leg day."

"_We're here, boss,_" FRIDAY reported. The jet slowed marginally as the auto-land feature kicked over, giving Tony and Rhodey enough time to sit and strap in for the landing on uncertain ground.

"Do a quick scan, Fri," Tony ordered. The ship shuddered to a stop, kicking on flood lights over the dark landing site. FRIDAY's scanners swept over the land and popped up a digital layout on the back terminal as they unclasped the harness seats.

"We don't even have to get out," Rhodey said, gesturing along the edge of the hologram with a finger. "This is shit – look at that basin. Taskmaster gets around us and he'll have the high ground in any number of spots."

Tony agreed. The field was a deep bowl with thick grasses and high trees up at the edge. Quiet save for a few night-birds that had been disturbed by the landing, it looked like a very peaceful place for a bloodbath. "We'll pass on this one.

"_Tony, come in,"_ Steve called over the radio.

"God, is that you?" Tony asked, strapping back into his seat.

Steve ignored the joke. "_Our site is a no-go."_

"Same here," he replied.

A pause, then he added; _"Vision is reporting his site is mostly underwater. Summer rain overflowed a nearby lake."_

"That still leaves two." Tony slapped a couple of switches to start lifting off again. "Friday, put some coffee on; we're headed back." The computer paused a beat too long in responding. "You listening, Friday?"

"_I've lost contact with the compound."_

Tony frowned. "Well, bump the signal."

"_Signal's fine; we're getting Captain Rogers loud and clear."_

"Reboot systems."

"_Already tried that."_

"What's going on?" Rhodey asked, sitting in the co-pilot seat.

"The barn's gone dark." Tony paused, thinking. "Diagnostics?" he asked FRIDAY.

"_Offline. No reported malfunctions before signal loss."_

The hum of the engines grew in direct correlation to the rapidity of his thoughts. "Hold on," Tony told Rhodey, barely giving him time to strap into his seat. Without hesitating a moment longer he punched the jet's acceleration straight to Mach 1.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rhodey barked.

"The phone lines get cut right after the family all leaves for the movies?" Tony pulled off his harness and moved to the back of the jet.

"Gear up, Fri," he ordered, and the back panel slipped away and machinery hummed to life, pulling open a suit. "The compound's under attack."

Panels locked into place, whirring at a familiar excited hum. His heads-up display flickered to life as the bottom of the jet fell away, dropping Iron Man into the open air. Faster than the jet's top speed, the suit rocketed forward, punching through Mach 2 to Mach 3, booming through the empty night. "Get me eyes on the compound, Friday. Don't care how you do it."

Flickers of light across the screen showed signals bouncing back as Friday ran through a series of lower-level protocols. _"Initializing Clock-Out Protocol. Full systems shutdown command transmitting now."_

Trees and hills and mountains rushed past in a blur of green and evening gray. _Should have taken the fast way out,_ Tony berated himself,_ rather than saving fuel. _A Mach journey would have been a little uncomfortable for all parties, but what had comfort cost them?

Rushing closer at a blistering speed, Tony should have been able to clearly see the floodlights at the compound guiding him home. Instead, crackling lights like distant lightning pushed rocks further down into his stomach, building a mountain of dread.

Tony landed on the lawn, powering up his repulsors as floodlights kicked on, throwing light and contrast onto the scene.

"_Systems initializing, stand by."_

He didn't need the computer to tell him something had gone wrong. Blood. Smoking patches of lawn.

"Mister Stark?" A young man, with one shoulder wrapped in heavily stained cloth but carrying a rifle in his other, approached across the lawn. "Glad to see you're back, Sir. Sorry for the mess; we're working on cleaning it up now."

Tony opened his suit's face. He looked alert, and clearly nursing some kind of injury, but otherwise seemed relatively calm. "What's your name again?"

The kid tried to salute and almost dropped his rifle, so gave up on the attempt. "Fletcher – Freddie Fletcher, Sir."

Tony nodded sharply. "Status report, Agent Fletcher."

"Oh no – I'm not – I flunked out-" the young man stumbled to correct him.

Tony took a few steps forward to be within close reach and tapped the man's shoulders with a bladed hand. "I christen thee _Agent_, now: why is my yard on fire?"

"We put it out, Sir. Oh…" he flushed, "you mean," he cleared his throat, shifting in place uncomfortably. "Some of the others were celebrating passing, but the lights mostly went out. I was in the mess with Janie when we saw him – a guy in a white cape attacking people on the lawn. We've got it all sorted now, but-"

Twin jets roared out the rest of the explanation as they caught up with Tony's rapid return to the compound, landing on the lawn as he had done. The large jets scorched the grass in wide swaths. _Gonna have to replace the whole spread now_, he thought. _Rude._

Cap and Sam burst from the Jet, Vision and Wanda phasing right through the walls of the other.

Tony help up a hand to stop the drama from going too over the top. "Stand down, Cap; whatever's happened is all over."

"Go on, Fletcher," Tony instructed as the menagerie took an uncertain breath. They weren't used to coming late to the party.

Freddie turned a deeper red, clearly intimidated to be the one reporting on the situation to the _Avengers_. "Well, sir; after the white-cape was knocked out we carried him to medical. He doesn't remember anything, I guess. Not even how he got shot. We assumed that-"

Jets one and four landed, interrupting again, and thankfully Natasha had the good grace not to come running. She had the reasoning power to realize that if they were all standing around then the world was not in utter crisis. Rhodey pulled up not too longer after, further destroying Tony's green lawn.

"Is everyone accounted for?" Cap asked, taking in the scene and spotting far-off Agents rushing through glass-walled halls and skywalks.

"We're working on that," Freddie lifted an older style radio. "It's easier to run sweeps when the lights are on."

"Friday, how's that systems check going?" Tony asked, already impatient.

"_Compiling – all the backup data saved but there's a lot to go through."_

Steve, still in Captain-mode, set a hand on the Agent's shoulder as he wobbled slightly in place. "We'll take over the search, son – I think it's time for you to go sit down. The medical bays should be-"

He interrupted, as if he'd heard the sentence before. "On backup power, yes sir. They're mostly full already and I didn't want to take up space."

"I think you're owed a bed," Steve insisted, very encouragingly sending the agent on his way.

"Who told you?" Tony asked suddenly, squinting an eye.

"Mister Stark?" Fletcher asked like a question, pausing in retreat.

"Who told you that medical runs on backup power in a shutdown?"

The Agent thought about it, fixing his rifle's slipping strap on his shoulder. "Miss Sigynsdottir."

"Is she in medical?" Sam asked.

He shook his head. "No Sir – she took the first rifle to help Sergeant Barnes. Haven't seen her since."

_That's right_, Tony thought, looking around as if they might appear; popping up like a surprise party, _they were here alone._ "Friday – where are Clockwork Orange and the Stepford Wife?"

"_Searching," _the computer paused only very briefly. "_They're not on the compound, but Agent Merced is in the medical bay."_

Tony relayed the information and it was Wanda who first asked the burning question; "What is she doing there?"

"Does anyone else feel like we're missing something?" Sam asked.

Natasha frowned – never a good sign. "This was all her plan – why was she here?"

Tony looked around, at the blood and scorched earth. The sense of dread returned as the realization washed over him. "Because the best way to break into a bank is to walk in the front door."

"_I've got the compile," _FRIDAY reported, _"you're not going to like this."_

* * *

Silence filled the conference room as multiple shots played simultaneously. A room full of heroes who'd shed their arms and armor, ready for a battle that was already over, watched the story play out. The salvaged footage didn't have any sound, but it wasn't necessary to understand what was happening.

A frenzy of excitement.

Power flickering.

A frenzy of fear.

Alice and Bucky arguing, handing her a knife, stepping back.

"What is she doing?" Wanda asked.

"She's activating the Soldier," Tony replied. It couldn't be anything else. It was like watching the Titanic sink.

Rescuing the fallen, setting them off to safety.

A battle of Forgotten Soldiers.

The turn for the worse.

Alice's decision.

A barrage of steel on steel, played out on the lawn and inside.

A kill-shot held back.

Betrayal from within.

A plea for mercy.

Subduing the enemy.

Retreating with the fallen.

The screens went dark as the last of the footage ran out. Tony closed his eyes and rubbed at the lids. He was so damn tired.

Natasha was the first to speak, standing. "I'm going to put a watch at Mercedes' bed."

Tony kept rubbing at his eyes as if it would ease the sour taste in his mouth. "Friday, fine me that van."

"_On it, boss._"

"Good luck with that," Sam said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tony asked sharply.

Sam scowled over crossed arms. "It's supposed to mean we looked for Barnes for almost two years and didn't find him."

Tony wasn't discouraged. "I don't give up in the first five minutes playing Where's Waldo."

Sam stood with a screech of his chair as fury tightened his shoulders. Wanda stood with him, barring him with an arm.

Steve stood as well, his commanding tone holding back any potential violence. "Let's everybody cool off – Sam, take Wanda and get those weapons lockers switched back to the proper locks. Rhodes, Vision; get the jets back to the Hangar bays."

Steve let the silence hang as the room emptied. Tony avoided whatever _Tragic Hero Look__TM _Cap might be sending his way, clasping his hands tightly and focusing on the pattern of the table.

Steve closed the door and took a seat across from him. "I'm sorry, Tony."

Tony snapped, looking up at the exact expression he'd been trying to avoid. "Didn't I say it? Didn't I say that shit would hit the fan if we tried to use Barnes?"

Steve's mouth twisted into a disappointed scowl. "This isn't his fault."

Tony could have punched him in the teeth. "Because it's never his fault, right? HYDRA, pulling all the strings. Except this time, _we_ did it. This is on _us_. Whatever happens, whoever's parents end up dead on the side of the road, that's on _us_."

Steve's expression broke from tragic hero to devastated as the depth of the statement hit him like a bag of bricks. _Now he knows I know_. Tony was ready for Steve to defend his old friend. He was ready for a lie, or an argument, or a rapid defense.

But Steve looked down in resignation, demonstrating both a patience that the old soldier rarely presented. He looked to be considering his words carefully; as someone who'd had this exact conversation practiced in his head might. "You're right," Steve admitted, making eye contact again.

Tony wasn't ready for that. "I'm always right."

Steve snorted once in a brief laugh. He leaned back in his chair and let out a deep and tortured sigh. "Maybe I was hoping that this could start to make things right. Maybe I thought I could keep the news from hurting you." He looked so damn earnest about it. "I guess I should know better; not talking about it never kept bad news from hurting someone." He smiled and it looked like it hurt.

"Maybe you were afraid I'd kick his ass." Tony looked down at the table, rapping his knuckles against the wood. "Maybe I should. I've got to find him first, though. June Cleaver, too, while I'm at it." He avoided Steve's pleased grin. "Now get out of my face – your righteous goodness is getting all over everything."

"We still need to talk," Steve said as Tony stood to leave.

Tony plunged his hands into his pockets. "You're just _gunning_ for a punch in the teeth, aren't you?"

"About Mercedes Merced," Steve added.

"Oh," he said, "Benedict Arnold. What _is_ the going rate for treason these days; life?"

Steve gave him yet another patented Steve Rogers LookTM. "We can't just lock her up, Tony: Masters would be alone."

Tony shrugged. "That's where you're wrong; I'll lock them both up. His n' Hers cells. Problem solved."

Steve looked disapproving. "Masters isn't the enemy here. I'm not convinced Merced is either."

Tony was ready to throw up his hands in frustration. "Well we can't blame HYDRA this time, and I'm done taking the blame. The Accords have the right idea; pop them into the middle of the ocean where they can't hurt anyone."

Steve stood to oppose him. "We can't just lock up everyone who has powers if we don't like the way they use them." His tone softened, losing the command and going for an appeal instead. "They were both SHIELD, Tony. They were one of _us_. It's our mistake that led to this."

Tony considered it. He really wanted to knock out Steve's teeth in that moment, just for the satisfaction of wiping the look off his face. He'd resorted to violence in an argument before – recently, even – and it hadn't made him feel any better. It had made him feel like garbage, actually, regardless of the spooky creature that had tried to frighten him.

He had a second chance to get it right. He didn't get an awful lot of second chances nowadays. "Friday, let me know when Agent Merced wakes up."

"_Yes, boss._"

"There," Tony clapped his hands together, backing out of the conference room, "satisfied? A suspended sentence until the Governor calls."

Steve still stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets.

Tony heaved a sigh. "Why so glum, boy wonder? You won."

Steve frowned, the corners of his mouth turning down in near disappointment. "I didn't think we had to worry about our own again. I thought we'd learned."

The old soldier looked as tired as Tony felt. They'd lost so much in the last few years, leaving large and conspicuous gaps in their numbers. Tony had done his best to distract himself as well as the others by flooding the halls with new agents; eager faces looking to the new future.

Tony turned away. "Not this time." Maybe he should have done a better job in cleaning up the past. Maybe he should have taken the time to tie up loose ends. "I'll be in my lab. I've got to plug all the holes in this leaky ship before we sink again."

* * *

Tony tapped furiously at the tablet as he walked, frowning at the data streams. "Alright – so we've reset the relays and cleaned up the logs. What did that get us?"

The corner of the tablet showed the fleeting though processes of FRIDAY's mainframe, still recovering from the hack. "_Agent Merced interrupted a scheduled backup cycle to disengage communications, then sent the system into a repeating reboot."_

"Leaving the creepiest horror movie lighting," Tony added. "What happened to system security?"

"_This information is all available in protocol manuals stored on-site. It's accessible with top-level clearance that you authorized on her arrival."_

"Might as well have just left the doors wide open," he grumbled to himself.

Tony felt beyond foolish. Hadn't he learned a damn thing from all of his experiences with SHIELD? The old guard could hardly be trusted to keep paperclips straight, let along their motives clear. _We'll do better this time_, he thought, waving his hand in front of the sensor for his lab. The door opened like it should but the room smelled wrong, causing him to slow his entrance.

In the center of his worktable, a plate wrapped in tinfoil waited for him. Tony set down his tablet and picked up a note that had been slid half under the plate.

_as requested :)  
–A_

Tony peeled up the corner of the tinfoil. He half expected a scorpion to crawl out. The contents revealing no scorpion, but a far more friendly surprise, Tony sat down on a stool and peeled the foil off entirely.

_Chocolate chip cookies._ He bit off a corner of the cookie, chewing slowly. Buttery, chocolatey, perfect.

No hidden joke there, no tongue-in-cheek commentary, just a reminder that she'd been listening. A reminder that she was there; someone who understood that loneliness is the enemy. Someone who didn't want him to be lonely.

"Any luck finding that van?" he asked FRIDAY.

"_Not yet; satellites aren't picking up main or auxiliary signals from the van's tracking unit." _If the Soldier was even a tenth of the tactical resource the stories claimed him to be he would have disabled them.

"Show me the last five of the show again." Tony took another cookie, popping it whole into his mouth.

The turn for the worse.

Alice's decision.

A barrage of steel on steel, played out on the lawn and inside.

A kill-shot held back.

"Stop there," he said, the footage freezing instantly.

He stared at Alice's determined expression. "Why didn't you shoot to kill, Furiosa? Would've been over," Tony wondered out loud.

_Maybe that was the point._ The wild-woman had gone to great lengths – nearly theatrical ones – to force a very specific reaction out of him a few short weeks ago. She'd been acting from experience, from a knowledge of the violent reactions she'd witnessed in others to defend family. _No,_ it dawned over him_, not others. _

He leaned back as far as he could without falling out of his chair. "So," he mused out loud, "if you've done it before, why not shoot now?"

Adding to the list of regrets accumulating in his head, Tony wished he'd spent a few more minutes talking with the self-assigned chef. A retired soldier that made bag lunches in her spare time and moved plants across the floor to keep them in the sunshine. Repeated exercises in kindness, like it was a physical effort.

An effort. A _choice_.

A plate of cookies, a declaration of _I'm here _and_ I'm listening _and_ please don't forget about me. _Someone who recognized the weaknesses and faults in others and worked to patch them up, one chocolate chip at a time. Someone who, when presented with the cruel and easy path chose the hard, painful, tortured kindness.

She and Cap had served together – all three of them, to be precise – and it only made sense that some of their virtues and vices might have rubbed off on each other over the two years. A bond of brotherhood, of a classic chivalrous attitude to brothers-in-arms.

Those virtues had carried through the entire history of SHIELD. Not the muddy parts defiled by HYDRA, but the pure and good parts of it. No man left down, no memory forgotten, a gleaming pinnacle of valor. The modern world had taken it and twisted it and stabbed it almost into a squishy nothingness. Steve had taken it up again, intent on nurturing it into a new dawn. Tony paid for everything and made everyone look cool, but it was Steve that had the vision.

A vision of the future built from the pillars of the past. The new Agents seemed to be picking it up just fine; even the failed Agents had stayed to fight with nothing but their bare hands. Tony had some catching up to do on that front, but for now he could practice on this case study of kindness.

_One of us._

"Friday, run a map search."

* * *

Mercedes hurt.

It was the first sensation that returned to her, dulled though it was. Her leg hurt, as did the right side of her face where the Soldier had clocked her with the butt of her pistol.

_Son of a bitch_, she thought slowly. There had been a clear hate in his eyes. He'd pointed the pistol at her head after he'd knocked her clean off Alice, seemed to reconsider, and that was the last thing she remembered.

She blinked slowly, her eyelids much heavier than she remembered. She went to rub at her face but hissed in discomfort as her wrist hit a barrier in the air. _Handcuffs_. The metal jangled against the hospital bed rail loudly.

Mercedes tried to sit up and instantly an alarm started to blare. Whether set off by her skyrocketing blood pressure or some other sensor, she didn't know. The door opened and Mercedes almost expected an armed guard.

Instead, Tony Stark entered, pushing a button by the door to turn off the alarms. "Welcome back," Tony greeted.

Mercedes paused, trying to decide whether she had the mental muscle for a quick bluff. She didn't. "I gather from the handcuffs that I can't bluff you into thinking I'm happy with the outcome."

Stark dragged a chair to her bedside. "That would be a 'no'."

"That's too bad." Merced turned her head away, looking out the window. "Where is my husband?" Merced demanded. A deep fear had settled in her stomach, wondering if the spiteful Soldier would have killed him, eliminated as ordered-

"He's in the next room being treated for a gunshot wound to the shoulder. He's very politely asking around if anyone knows who he is." Stark sat down in the chair. "There are a lot of discussions being had about what to do with you. But no one had gotten the chance to talk to you. Get your take on everything."

Mercedes gave a curious but hostile look. "I'd probably solve the problem with a bullet."

Stark seemed less than bothered by her aggression. Not surprising, given she was handcuffed to a hospital bed with a bunch of tubes and wires attached to various body aprts. "We've already had that option – you have Alice Sigynsdottir to thank for the fact that you're still alive."

Mercedes scoffed. "She's a silly girl."

"I don't disagree." Stark's mouth quirked to one side. "But we don't get a lot of second chances in our business, do we?"

"No," she agreed slowly, "we don't."

Stark gave her an appraising look. "HYDRA never had control over Masters, did they?"

"…no." It clearly wasn't worth denying.

"Give me something," he asked seriously, "something to tell me _why_."

She wondered if she could convince Stark that she wasn't crazy – that she had solid reasons for needing to kill the Soldier.

He was inviting her to try.

Mercedes licked her lips – she was so thirsty, and the logical part of her brain reminded her of the effects of blood loss. "The Soldier was HYDRA, regardless of whether he meant to be. He was the best of them, and as such he's the best asset for them to use if they want to dismantle SHIELD entirely. There are so many ways for us to lose. So many monsters waiting to cut your throat; Fury understood that and let us keep working. You should understand, Stark; you've seen the endgame; up there in the stars. We can't get bogged down with losses on the ground and lose sight of the future we could have."

Stark listened intently, his expression open and surprisingly non-judgmental. Her words ran out and she could only stare at him as he processed. He'd been born into this world, this SHIELD with all of the spectacular visions and weak foundation. Stark had taken it up as a new mantle, and it was left to him whether or not it would crumble a second time.

Stark nodded as he processed her thoughts. "I won't ask you about what you've done, partly because I don't think you'll tell me and partly because it shouldn't matter. You're one of us - well, SHIELD - and someone forgot to mention that the locks were being changed when the business changed hands."

One of the machines attached to her beeped for attention and Stark adjusted it. As far as Mercedes could tell, he was genuinely trying to help. He stood again, grabbing a tablet she hadn't seen from a nook by the door. He typed with one hand on the screen, almost idly. "If we lose the ground we stand on, what'll be left to fight for?"

"I think you're due some back pay, but more than that; it's time for you and your husband to retire." Stark flipped the tablet around to show her the screen – an overhead view of a little spit of land that barely qualified as an island. It sat like a perfect emerald gem in an aquamarine sea.

"What is that?" she asked, confused.

Stark handed her the tablet. "The new SHIELD special retirement plan. It's a little island just for you and Masters. FRIDAY will keep an eye on you, keep the satellite radio working and the bon-bons in good supply."

Mercedes zoomed in on the map of the island with a confused tilt of her head. "You're serious?"

"Sometimes."

"I was going to kill Barnes."

"I know."

"He killed your parents for HYDRA."

"I know that too. Listen; please stop trying to convince me to have you shot. It's not going to work."

Mercedes sagged back against the pillows, already exhausted. "I don't understand."

Stark adjusted her machines again, and a warm fuzzy feeling of good pain medication rushed through her veins, easing the exhaustion. "That's okay - you've got a lot of time to sit in the sun and think about it. Even monsters deserve peace."

_Ah_. So the plan had been that fool's idea. "So she's fine then."

Stark paused, and Mercedes wondered if maybe she had been wrong. "We hope so." He didn't expand any further on the cryptic statement. Stark opened the door and stepped out into the hall, calling to some unseen person, "Bring him in."

Mercedes' heart seized in her chest as she recognized the open and curious face. His shoulder had been treated with care. Tony was handcuffed to his wheelchair, but he seemed unconcerned. The Agent moving him switched his handcuff to her bedrail, leaving his hand within grasping distance.

Mercedes fought back emotion as she sat up slowly, breath coming in shallow bursts.

"Hello," he greeted with a mild smile. "Uh, I'm so sorry if we've met before, but could you remind me of your name?"

"Mercedes," she croaked. She slid her hand along the bed rail until she could rest her hand lightly on his. "And you're Tony. Tony Masters."

* * *

A/N: A lot of thought goes into the names for chapters. For example, this chapter's title cycled through the following: _Return to Sender / The Things That Scare Us / Cornerstone/ Breaking the Wheel_ until I finally settled on Escape Velocity.

There's some really subtle stuff going on in this chapter, and some less subtle stuff too.

I'm so, so excited to give you the next chapter. It's just about ready to go, so be on the lookout for it tomorrow, **Sunday** **October 6****th**. If you just can't wait, then TONIGHT is the night to go back and re-read both WIAS and RITD. Lots of things will be coming back around.

The Instagram artist doing a selection of WIAS and RITD themed pieces for Inktober 2019 is **wednesdoodle** (enjoy! I know I am!)

Many thanks to my reviewers: TrilbyBard, Omega-66, haze47, PistolHattersButtercup, LisaPark, Books1993, 0peneyeZ, rosafern, x-EarthAlchemist-x, TimeLordsRule, Flours, Idontknoworcareanymore, tuckerjnp, WeEattheUglyOnes, LoveFiction2019, Sulia Serafine, LeandraWhite, SabakuNoGaara426, and nerdalertwarning!

**PLEASE REVIEW!**


	32. Ya'Aburnee

The warehouse served only marginally as a safe house.

The safe house had clearly been abandoned for some time but the proper reserves were still in place; handily concealed, they had been forgotten when the rest of the usual supplies were cleared out. Cobwebs covered most surfaces, along with a thick layer of dust, but low spots in the dust indicated large pieces of equipment had once occupied the warehouse. Grimy windows high overhead threw weak shafts of light into the vacant building, catching along the heels of the Soldier as he collected medical supplies to repair his injured Commander.

The Soldier had done his best to cover all of the individual bullet holes with the tiny gauze squares found in the first-aid kit of the stolen van. _Eleven_. And a broken jaw. It served a purpose well enough – to keep Commander from bleeding to death as the Soldier worked to provide adequate security.

_Hey, Dodo… can we… go home?_

The Soldier didn't have the location of his Commander's home. It wasn't information typically provided during the course of a mission. For lack of proper orders, the Soldier was to go to ground at the nearest safe house. No one had moved to stop him leaving the compound weaponless with a half-dead Commander in his arms.

Another thought, like the dozens that had won his last fight for him, leapt to the forefront of his mind. _Hell,_ _I've carried guns that weighed more than her._ The Soldier shook his head firmly, like he could dislodge the memory. He missed the peace of a true stabilization that usually afforded several days of serene silence in his head.

A noise across the warehouse caught his attention, reminding him of the need for the slightly expired medical supplies he'd gathered. Birds high in the creaky rafters stared down in mild interest, cooing and chirping their commentary.

Commander's body lay on the best mattress he could find; a pile of painters' drop-cloths bundled up into a mass. She'd moved slightly in his absence, but not enough to signal waking. Wraps on both knees like poorly fitted sports gear and a bloody Dalmatian collection of spots on her torso wrote a testament to his failure.

The Soldier could only hope that she didn't remember anything from the trauma, and could only report that it seemed he had saved her life. The Soldier could only wonder how severely he would be punished if Commander died. She was a terrible commander, of that he was certain, but he had no desire to be punished for her shortcomings.

He punched through the protective foil on a bottle of rubbing alcohol with his thumb and splashed it liberally onto the clean gauze. Pulling at the torn cloth on her knees he checked the bandage, peeling up the edge to check for oozing and early signs of infection.

The blood appeared to have clotted well, sticking her thin pants to her skin. He pressed the gauze carefully to try and separate the cloth and prevent an infection – yet another way this useless Commander could die, weak little thing - and the whole clot wiped right off.

The Soldier stared as confusion tried to bore holes in his head. He held the gauze with mass of blood clot in one hand, and tugged the ripped hole in her pants larger with the other. Had he placed the bandage incorrectly? Using a second square gauze and another splash of alcohol he checked her other knee and reproduced the result.

He sat back slightly, staring at the oddly perfect skin. These were bullet holes. Eleven bullet holes. In the Soldier's experience, eleven bullet holes did not tend to disappear from skin.

Commander groaned, and rolled to her side, coming to. He rocked back on his feet, standing at attention as Commander sat up. She ran tiny hands over her stomach, pulling at the scraps of gauze and tape that covered what were no longer eleven bullet holes but more undamaged skin.

"Where are we?" Commander asked groggily, rubbing at her face without signs of discomfort.

_And a broken jaw._

He was unsure of how to answer. Did Commander want an exact location? Latitude and longitude or a street address? Had the question been intended as a test of some kind? Had he been meant to take them to a different location?

She shook a hand in his direction, seemingly withdrawing the question. "Never mind – I can see we're not at the compound." She ran tiny hands over her face, pressing at her eyes. Still disoriented, it seemed, she asked: "Are you alright?"

_Status report_, the Soldier mentally corrected. "There is no permanent damage," the Soldier said. He waited for the appropriate additional question – _Mission report, Soldat - _that should have followed.

Instead, Commander looked up at him from the pile of dusty drop cloths like she was the one waiting for a question. It made the Soldier that much more impatient for a proper set of orders. He'd been operating for the last eighteen hours on very basic conditioning and was absolutely ready for a return to normalcy.

Commander opened her mouth a few times as if to speak, each time frowning and pausing far too long. She hummed, watching him stare at her impatiently, and tilted her head slightly to one side. "Do you remember me?" Commander finally asked.

Some kind of trick? The clear answer would be to define her as Commander, but he could presume that wasn't the answer she was looking for. He took the opportunity to examine her closely, at the clear invitation of her question.

She wasn't much of anything – a tiny woman, hardly able to defend herself against a stray cat, let alone the Soldier. If not for the knife… his thoughts stopped there. His eyes swept her from head to toe, taking in her bloody and torn and generally bedraggled form. Completely ignoring the lack of uniform and proper decorum, he was simply searching for the shape of the knife. She had nowhere to hide it in the remnants of her clothes, and the shape did not appear. He dropped from his strict posture into a closer crouch, squinting to examine closely.

"What?" she asked. She did not lean away from him as she should have. If anything, she leaned slightly towards him.

Close enough to taste the remnants of her blood in the air, he could be certain now: Commander was unarmed.

A latent command process, long unused, ticked into life in his brain. _A presentation of arms shall be made to your commander in the event they are unarmed. _But the Soldier had no weapons on his person. Lacking his typical tactical gear, there had been no place to holster a weapon and carry the unconscious Commander at the same time. He'd been forced to abandon tactical superiority in retreat.

_The vehicle originated from a secure location, and likely has concealed weapons,_ the Soldier reasoned. He rolled up onto his feet again and walked swiftly through the open warehouse floor, startling the birds above with his sharp motions.

"Wait!" Commander cried, clearly forgetting that her orders were meaningless until she was armed. It was the first order, the _only_ order that mattered in that moment. The careless, poorly trained tiny creature would not be able to stop him without a weapon.

He'd pulled the unmarked van deep into the warehouse in the unlikely event it had a tracker hidden inside he'd been unable to locate, relying on the thick concrete masonry walls to shield it. He yanked the doors open, pulling out insulation and paneling in search of hidden weapons.

"What are you doing, _hey!_" Commander cried, tone far past irritated.

_No weapons_. The Soldier slammed the doors shut, chest writhing with a combination of fear and anger. _Unacceptable. _If he failed to provide a proper presentation of arms he would certainly be terminated. He brushed past his Commander and climbed into the van's driver's seat, looking over at passenger seat for the discarded keys – he'd thrown them somewhere in that direction, he was sure.

"Where are you going?" Commander demanded, pulling open the passenger door to glare.

_A direct question at last. _"You require a weapon. One must be obtained from headquarters."

"HYDRA headquarters?" Commander asked, a note of strain in her voice. "But-" her hand flew to her throat, fingers tracing along the ghost of a shape there. She patted along the hollow of her throat like she was missing something there, and her expression grew pained. "Oh fuck, it's gone."

The Soldier couldn't wait any longer. He spotted the keys on the passenger dash and reached for them. A new thought, as unwelcome as the dozens before it, pulled back on his reach. Staring at the keys, a single word repeated in his mind. _Escape._

Such an odd thought. Did the Soldier have anywhere else to go? He breathed deeply in a silent sigh of defeat, and a thread of a memory left him searching for the smell of cold, wet, and salt. The Soldier frowned, pausing to stare at the keys without reaching for them.

The hesitation cost him. Commander stepped up into the van and seized the keys, clutching them tightly to her chest. "I'm not letting you go back to HYDRA," she insisted, moving backwards into the open space of the warehouse.

_Unacceptable. _The Soldier pursued.

His Commander needed a weapon – that much was a clear requirement. Both he and Commander could be punished severely for this breach. He held out an expectant hand for the keys.

"No," Commander said sharply. She clearly did not intend to be disobeyed.

A thrill in his gut reveled in disobedience, and a charge in his heart commanded him to leave his hand extended and insistent – completing this task would keep Commander and himself from painful retribution. He could remember searing pain and sharp rebuke, and while a recalibration would clear his mind of the suffering the Soldier knew that Commander would have no such avenue of escape.

"You're going to have to kill me first," Commander said. "Because I'd rather die."

Did she intend to force HYDRA's hand in his punishment? How had this strange creature ever become a HYDRA Commander? Had she sought the post to force him against his conditioning? To laugh at his pain as her refusal to follow protocol led to his suffering?

If his Commander had decided to rebel, to mutiny against the greater commanding forces, then she had outlived her usefulness to the organization. The Soldier would not be punished for cutting off a rotting head, allowing two more to spring anew in her place.

He approached with slow and careful steps. This gave him the appearance of uncertainty, and fooled Commander into standing her ground. The strike he placed across her face ripped through skin and cracked bone.

Commander staggered, fell, but did not clutch at her face as would have been expected. She did not cry out as she fell, hard, barely breaking her fall and clearly twisting her wrist. The van's keys clattered off into a dark corner out of her reach.

She touched at her face as blood dropped from her mouth but stopped faster than it should have. She closed her eyes, pushing back some pained emotion, mouthing something to herself too quiet for him to hear. "They'll kill you if you go back," she said. "So I'll say it again; you'll have to kill me first."

She stood, keeping herself between him and the discarded keys. "Because I'd rather die a thousand times than live without you again."

"You're more than strong enough; I know." She wiped the blood away with the back of her hand and, of all things, she smiled. "It's okay. Bury me deep; deeply in wet earth. I can't wake up and find myself in a world without you."

She looked so tired as sheblocked his path, but the Soldier could see the stony determination in her dark eyes. "It's okay," she repeated sadly. She was ready to die. The sight of it made his stomach churn with wordless agony. It burned inside his chest that she did not move to shield herself as he stepped close.

It could have been counted as luck that he reached out with his right, not his much stronger left, to strangle the life out of her. Being so small, he hadn't thought he'd need the left's strength to kill her.

It could have been counted as luck that as his calloused hand met her skin, he couldn't help but wonder at the softness of it.

The wonder drew at his curiosity, loosening his grip to watch deep bruises flare and fade at a speed quite inhuman. The swift healing should have surprised him – further proof of this unexpected skill in his Commander merited note – but it did not. She'd healed from bullet wounds at a rapid speed, so the logic was there, but the sight of it was strangely familiar. Commander's form was… familiar, more than curious.

His hand moved from strangling to just carefully touching at the shape of her neck. So close, _too_ close, he could see she was free of blemishes of any kind – scars, stretch marks, freckles – there was no history written on her skin.

His Commander held quite still as he examined her, her body entirely lacking the tension that most seemed to hold in his presence. The strength of the familiarity grew as he examined her, and the Soldier found that he knew that body in ways he should not.

He traced her neck to tired shoulders, then down the run of toned arms to her hands, lifting them up to examine closely. He knew her hands would be free of callouses, but that the side of her forefinger would be a light pink from repeated recent nervous fidgeting.

The strong smell of burning magnesium that had invaded his nostrils faded as he dared to breathe with her hands so close to his face, and a smell like clover flowers pulled at his memory. His memory? His memory was a barren field, stripped down to bare mineral soil. That bare earth trembled like Spring's anticipation as he ran his thumbs along her knuckles, her skin as soft as the freshest flower petals.

"Do you remember me?" Commander asked again, breaking the silence.

It brought him back in an instant, and he reeled back, suddenly fearful of the knowing and curiosity that had overcome his base programming. These thoughts were dangerous – these thoughts brought on questions that brought on pain, and he was so tired of being in pain. Memories of guns and death and violence hid in the shadows of pain.

"No!" she cried, reaching for him, "don't fight it!" His Commander caught his face and forced him to look at her, deep brown eyes boring into him. Her eyes looked like empty pits, but flickering across his face there were veins of cinnamon that caught the light at odd angles, like glimpses of fire. Inexplicably, the sight of it tasted like apple, felt like a chill on his hands, multiplied the smell of her hair.

His Commander seemed to sense his hesitation and his confusion. "Don't fight it," his Commander whispered. "Come back to me." Her hands brushed at his face as her thumbs worked along his cheeks, scratching against his beard. "Come back."

_Come back to where?_ He didn't understand the question, as he hadn't gone anywhere, but from the bare soil of his mind, fresh green shoots began to rise. Patient seeds that had been lingering beneath the soil, just waiting for the time and the light and the water to be perfect, reached for the sun. It wasn't the weedy confusion that pre-empted re-stabilization, but a verdant field of purpose and meaning.

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes; _Bucky_," her voice tried to cut through the thick fog building behind his eyes. "You remembered me, once."

"_Stop_," he begged her. Her voice echoed and clawed along the insides of his skull, scattering like light over glass to cut more deeply into the serene wasteland and let more of those weedy thoughts start to grow.

He groaned, his head splitting with agony as a rush of a memory and sensations rushed over him. He needed to know more, but it hurt so badly to know. He couldn't want things, couldn't have that desire for completion. His activation mocked him every time, commanding him through that desire, with the first activating order; _Zhelaniye._

He shouldn't have wanted it, but he _wanted _this. More than he wanted air and water and rest to overtake his weary body he longed deeply to drown in the sensations that rolled against his senses like the first breath of Spring. A desire, a want, or a _longing_; _Zhelaniye._

"I won't stop; I know you remember me. You promised me that you would." She still held onto his face, his Commander, whether keeping him from collapsing or to keep him from dissolving entirely he couldn't be certain. His Commander, _his_, something that belonged to him with a definite certainty violently rejected the title he tried to hold in his mind.

Because she was not a Commander; she was a force rising from the new growth of flowers in his memory. She was a golden orange light, the center of the universe, a Californian sunset.

"What's my name?" she asked, her head tilting to the side to search his face with deep cinnamon eyes.

She wasn't his Commander, but she was almost certainly still _his_. He knew it with a deep desire that pulled in his gut, like going home again, like a peaceful place that he couldn't find except in his dreams, calling into an empty night; _Zhelaniye._

He heard her earnest voice ringing through his body even when she did not speak. _Breathe_, she said. Her defiant claim;_ I'm not afraid of you._

He moved his hands from their curious place on hers to place them gently against her cheeks, mirroring how she held his face. His chest ached and his mouth tried to form around words that were simply missing. Her face looked so familiar, like a place he'd known once and dreamt of returning someday, to walk in the door and hear his name called with delight; _Zhelaniye_.

He'd dreamed of a lot of places when stabilization ran thin and he was waiting for the world to make sense again. He could remember looking up at the dark sky as snow started to fall, and sucking in great gulps of air as parts of him tried to remember if it smelled the same as all the times before.

Haunted by times before, he could remember a distant longing and a wistful sense of loneliness even in a crowded room. These crowded HYDRA rooms were never meant for him – conversations around him and regarding him, but never with him. He would remember, in all these lonely times, that sometimes he'd looked around briefly, listening for a voice that called to him and gave him a peace he'd never found again.

He'd had the voice, _the voice_, the voice that whispered and laughed and encouraged when he'd had nothing. When he'd had nothing else he'd had the voice. It met him in the empty void and reminded him that he was not a shell of a person meant only to fire with perfect accuracy. It soothed the fears and the agonizing uncertainty.

That voice had sounded so much like the woman in front of him with her soft tone and soft hands and determined encouragement. "I know," she said sadly as she stroked his cheeks with her thumbs. "It's alright."

But it _wasn't_ alright; the sights and sounds and sensations overlapping continued to tease him with the promise of meaning without ever actually reaching fulfillment. As he stood on the precipice of whatever revelation he was experiencing, he couldn't imagine going back to the blank, barren wasteland of _before_.

Before the spring.

Before the blooming fields.

Before the bitter winter.

Before the snow and before the blood.

Before a hundred beginnings.

Before sunsets and sunrise alike, with their golden greetings and tearful goodbyes.

_Come back to me. _She'd said that before.

_Before._

_Before_, he'd been here before. _We've been here before, do you remember how it ends?_ This _before_ ended with running and cold air and a little cabin with heat that didn't work all the time.

The thought flickered through him like a jolt of electricity, but faded as he felt her soft hands leave his face. "_Wait_," he begged as she let go. He'd been close to knowing – close to understanding the maze of memory and finding his way to the center.

Fingers traced along the edge of his jaw again and the tips of her fingers ran through his hair. "What's my name?" she asked again. "Come on, I know you can do this," she added, encouraging, "I believe in you."

He grabbed her hands with his, squeezing them as firmly as he closed his eyes and focused on the feel of them in his. This, _this_; it meant something. Too familiar to be imagined or hoped for. He could feel the significance buried deep in the weeds, but also blooming at the top like new flowers exploding in the sun. It was a feeling that ran through the entire course of him, a river that ran through all the gardens of him.

In all the scattered places of his memory, in all the times he'd ever been made new, and even tracing it back to the very first part of him that was first to be buried in stabilization, he could find that feeling. As he thought about any time he'd breathed in deep to search for a smell, the feeling he reached for was this moment; he was certain.

"Bucky," she called him, her voice barely above a whisper. She squeezed his hands to get his attention, and he opened his eyes. She had stood on her toes to bring her face so close to his that he could see the veins of cinnamon fire hiding in her eyes. "What's my name?"

The smell of her breath washed over him, sharp and herbal. He could taste it in the air, and it reminded him of dappled moonlight on herbal fields.

_One._

He blinked, confused. He'd fallen into something, his thoughts stumbling and rolling deeper.

_One._ The taste of mint in the air looked like dappled moonlight.

_Two__. _The sight of moonlight felt like fingers running through his hair, gently scrubbing away weeks of dirt.

Fingers in his hair like now, like her hands clasped there under his hands, holding her hands so tightly, holding her like _I thought you were dead. _His breath caught in his chest, gasping as a sense of fear and pain and relief and desperate desire washed over him.

It continued, a tunnel that went on forever burrowing deeper and deeper, or a tree growing higher and higher with branches too many to count.

_One. _A hand on his arm. _You are more important than a handful of bandages._

_Two. _A foul taste of herbs on his tongue. _In case they don't let me come back._

_Three. _The smell of blood and sulfur and fear. _It didn't work._

His knees gave out and he crumbled. Too small to catch him, she did her best to direct his fall so he knelt in front of her, clutching at his head as it threatened to burst open. He couldn't tell if he was screaming from the pain or not, from an overwhelming expansion of sensation to encompass too much emotion, too much longing, too much _too much_.

She drew him close, embracing him and holding his head to rest on her shoulder. She rocked slightly in place though it must have been murder on her knees, and it arched her back in another most painful way, and she ran her fingers through his hair.

_One. _Hanging up a coat at the end of a long day. _You home?_

_Two. _A spoonful of ice cream, freshly made. _Are you planning on staring at me as I eat it?_

_Three. _Familiar and unfamiliar music, and a call to dance. _You've no idea how well I can knock this out._

_Four. _A need reflected in her eyes. _Whatever you're about to try to say, I know you love me._

A river running through him, or a tree branching above, or countless stars in the sky that wrapped over him, each path brought him here. Just like before.

_We've been here before._

The surging waters stilled, and the branches stopped shaking in the wind, and he could see the whole of it. The light of her broke over the horizon; blazing orange and beautiful.

His breathing steadied, and she let go of him, pulling back slightly to search his face. "Bucky?" she asked.

_We've been here before, do you remember how it ends?_

Before, he'd had to learn to be human again, to be a _man_ and not just a Soldier. Someone she would be proud to stand beside in the sun as he called himself by the name she'd returned to him and he would call her name to see her smile.

He could not resist the urge to kiss her, and she did not move to stop him.

Of course he knew her name.

She smelled like the clover that violently overtook a manicured lawn.

_One._

Her skin felt like the rare and delicate petals of a flower opening in the moonlight.

_Two._

Her eyes looked like the oldest pitch-pine flickering with wildfire.

_Three_.

She tasted like raw mint, crushed between fingers.

_Four._

Her name, from his lips, rang out clearly like morning church bells in the empty warehouse with only the birds above as witness. "_Alice."_

_Five._

And she smiled.

* * *

**End of Act III: Revelation**


	33. Lucky Thirteen (Epilogue)

**A few weeks later...**

* * *

Alice heaved a sigh and glared. "There's really no sense in fighting this. One way or the other, you have to get in the barn."

The mare across from her nickered in response, dancing her hooves along the low grass. "Really? Come on!" Alice cried, throwing up her hands in frustration. "I know I was gone for a long time, but there's no reason to _still_ be holding a grudge! I'm offering the cookies you love!"

The horse tossed her head, refusing the cookie again. "_Two_ cookies then?" Alice pleaded, producing another from her pocket. The mare stomped close and ducked her head, nibbling at Alice's jacket pocket. "Oh alright, _three cookies_; but that's my final offer!"

The mare followed Alice into the barn as she fed her more than the three promised cookies. The horse kicked at the stall door as Alice shut it for the evening. "Hey!" Alice chided. "Manners!"

She cracked her back with a swift twist as she put away the last of the buckets, still tying to get back into the swing of things. Sam had left Stan in charge of the farm while she'd been 'away', and she was finding it a purposeful kind of comforting to return to her work.

She ascended the stairs to her apartment as Julian cried a miserable song from the upper stoop. He'd been slowest to forgive her absence, though for a standoffish Tom he'd been in the habit of following her around every corner of her acreage, as if reassuring himself that she'd really returned.

"Scooch, you great galoot, or we'll both starve," she coaxed the big ginger cat to one side to open the door. Julian shuffled to one side but zipped inside as soon as the door was opened a shade, still yowling his insistence that she feed him _right this minute or else he would starve to death_ in the way that only her favorite cat could. Alice scraped the contents of a can into his bowl, patting his back as he dug right in with noisy delight.

Alice opened the wide windows to let in the strong autumn breeze, tying back the gauzy white curtains to keep them from billowing in the wind. The air hummed with a crisp taste of a hard winter scant months away.

Alice opened the fridge and started pulling out ingredients to make something for dinner; Bucky would be coming back from the signing in Geneva and he'd be ready for some comfort food. Sacrificing a little freedom here and there to escape the bloody legacy of the Winter Soldier had been the only upside, in Alice's opinion, to the Avengers agreeing to sign.

As an afterthought, she switched on the little television in the corner of the room, turning the volume down until the news cycled back around. If she could, she wanted to see Bucky standing proudly with the others at the signing. He was just getting used to being out in public again, and she loved seeing him like that.

She didn't get far into preparation, just keeping a pepper from rolling off the countertop as her thick steel-reinforced front door rattled slightly with a _knock knock knock. _

Nobody Alice was expecting would knock. She pulled a knife from the block as she approached the door. She thought about activating her new security system – Tony had insisted – but she hesitated.

"Who is it?" she asked, not opening the door.

"_Father Christmas," _a gruff voice answered.

Alice almost threw the knife on the side table next to the door in her hurry to drop it. She pulled back the locks with shaking hands and ripped open the heavy door to see a familiar grizzly face that still filled the door frame in the way she had remembered.

"Cable?!" she cried in surprise, barely believing her eyes.

"You look good, Kid." A bionic eye and a fond human one looked down at her from the landing in front of the door. "Can I come in? I promised you answers."

"Please," Alice beckoned him inside.

He set his coat on the hook like he'd been there before, even though he'd left her long before the renovation that had produced her large apartment. He strolled through with the same certainty, pulling up a chair at the island in her kitchen before she'd had the opportunity to offer it. "I've got to give you props, I wasn't sure it could be done," he said cryptically.

Alice walked around the island, suddenly too full of energy to even consider sitting down. "If I ask you what you're talking about, will you actually tell me this time?"

Cable gave her a long look. If anything, he seemed calmer than she remembered; like he had found some kind of peace Alice had chased after all her life. "Do you remember the day you came back from 1944?" he asked.

She'd never forget it. "I do."

"I was lying when I said I knew where to pick you up because history said that's when Alice Shaw died. I knew where to pick you up because I'd picked you up there five times already. Four of those times you'd already drowned." He held her gaze as she processed it slowly.

Alice's gaze fixed on the marble of the island, deep black veins running through white stone like a river. She walked slowly around to Cable's side and sat down.

He continued. "I knew not to tell you anything before you'd traveled to 1943, because twice it didn't work to your advantage. I knew that you would be hurting when you come back, because the last time I tried to talk to you about why it was important."

Alice's mouth hung slightly open and she wasn't certain she was breathing at all.

"You still with me, kid?" he asked, snapping fingers in front of her face.

"Cable…" Alice breathed, looking up again, "how many times have you watched me die?"

He took a deep breath. "I tried everything. If I told you exactly what was going to happen you fucked it up by worrying about it. I tried telling you a little about where to be and when, but that didn't go so well either. You're such a contrary little asshole that if I told you to fix a few people you went all ham on it. But then coming back… you hadn't suffered enough, _stressed _enough…" he grinned at her.

"My mutation didn't develop," Alice realized. "I really killed myself."

"Or the Hydra sniper, or starving in Azzano, or the LST-6, or Taskmaster, or Merced. _Jesus Christ_ you're hard to keep alive," he groaned in frustration. "But...You said it yourself: _lucky number thirteen_."

Alice's eyes burned. "You're such an asshole," she croaked, leaning heavily on the island.

Cable's satisfied grin looked a little wry. "I'd say I'm sorry,"

"But that'd be a lie," Alice finished for him.

"I had to let you suffer this time, but I'm not sorry now. It worked." Definitely a relief in his voice, she could be certain.

"What were you trying to get me to change?" Alice asked.

The television chattered in the corner. '_King T'Chaka of Wakanda applauded the collective signing of the Sokovia Accords by the Avengers, promising that his nation would be more involved in protecting the future. It's uncertain how the small country, still in its developing stages, intends to-'_ Cable switched the television off with the remote she'd left on the island.

He gave her a strangely significant look. "Little changes make big waves, kid."

"You're not going to tell me, are you? I don't understand," Alice whispered. "I'm not… I'm not that _important_."

"No one is not important." Cable smirked. "But you, Alice Hrafnhildur Sigynsdottir _Barnes_, are especially not not-important." He winked.

"I'm not – he hasn't-" Alice sputtered, face growing quite red.

"Shame on me," Cable chuckled to himself, "must've gotten my dates mixed up. Enjoy your trip to the museum tomorrow." He checked some reading on his watch-like device that definitely wasn't a watch. "Would you look at the time; I've got to get going. Wouldn't want to break up the party."

"What party- you know what, you're just being an asshole now," Alice grumbled

Cable laughed – a free-sounding roar that Alice had never heard from him before. "Maybe I am! Walk me out, would you?" He shrugged on his coat with a great gathering of leather and he smiled. "I'm proud of you, kid." His eye sparkled with a fond light, and Alice really believed it.

Alice's eyes burned. "Stop it; we both know you don't have real human feelings."

Unexpectedly, he pulled her into a tight hug. Alice wrapped her arms around his great tree trunk of a middle, confused but understanding that it wasn't really about her. "Good luck, Missus Barnes," he said gently.

"Stop giving away the future, you idiot," Alice replied.

Cable laughed as he let her go. "There was a time you were practically _begging_ me to tell you the future, Barnes."

As she moved to close the door after him, a strike of realization flashed through her. "Hey!" she cried down the stairs. He turned to look up at her curiously. "The new last name – Shaw – you made it up to keep from calling me _Barnes_, didn't you?"

Cable grinned. He twisted something on his wrist, and in a bright flash of light he was gone.

Alice rubbed at her eyes, swearing something about _contrary little asshole_, but her words were drowned out by a low roar of jet engines that grew with each passing moment.

"There's the party, I guess…" she grumbled. "Always gotta be right, future-man."

Alice left the door unlocked, returning to the kitchen island to pull many more ingredients from the pantry and the fridge. If she had to guess, she was about to host quite the celebratory meal.

_Enough now of the wet eyes of winter._

_Not another single tear._

_Hour by hour now, green is beginning,_

_the essential season,_

_leaf by leaf,_

_until, in springs name, we are summoned_

_to take part in its joy._

Bucky was first in the door and Alice patted her hands clean on her apron, walking quickly across the open apartment to greet him. He gave her an apologetic smile and a kiss on the cheek as the loud commotion of several more guests ascended the stairs after him. "I'm sorry, Doll; they followed me home."

"My doors are always open to ruffians!" Alice laughed as the mob poured into her home.

"Ruffians, sure, but what about rogues? There's a few more behind me." Sam kissed her cheek in greeting. "Hey girl – couldn't miss Sunday dinner two weeks in a row."

"Hey – hands off!" Bucky cried, tugging at Alice's arm to demand more of her attention.

"Oh? Is this yours?" Sam held up Alice's hands and examined them carefully as if a ring might have appeared. "Didn't think so!"

"Stop teasing him," Alice chided, but her cheeks flushed a deep pink. _Good luck, Missus Barnes._

Alice looked out the window to the series of jets that had landed in her spare pasture, scorching some of the grass beyond recognition. She did not cry out in surprise as Vision phased through the wall to her left, but greeted the android with a welcoming smile.

"Can I assist you in any preparations?" he offered.

"Sure, Vis; grab a knife and some random vegetables," she beckoned for him to follow her to the kitchen island.

"Do you have a recipe?" he asked cautiously.

"Course not," Alice sang in reply.

A mild smile graced his face. "Silly me."

_How wonderful, its eternal openness,_

_clean air, the promise of flower,_

_the full moon leaving_

_its calling card in the foliage,_

_men and women trailing from the beach_

_with a wet basket_

_of shifting silver_

"Alright you monsters, come get it!" Alice called as Vision pulled a stack of plates from the cabinet. Natasha swept through first, dragging Wanda with her as she insisted 'ladies first'. Alice made sure that the super-soldiers got super-portions, but that no one in her home would go hungry.

Distracted, and without food in hand, Tony Stark stood slightly aside as he thumbed through his phone. "Tony – put down the phone and grab a plate," Alice chastised.

He looked up and pocketed the phone. "You want to postpone the advancement of young minds?"

Alice rolled her eyes. "Your interns can wait a few more hours to get their confirmation letters – Pepper called earlier and told me you haven't eaten yet today."

Last through the line, Tony caught her with empty hands as she set down her serving utensils. Feigning a sudden thought he reached into his coat pocket. "Oh – the vacuum picked this up during cleaning and broke the pump; I'll send you the bill, Cookie." Tony tossed her a box and Alice caught it.

Alice slipped open the lid and poured out the contents into her palm.

_Alice Shaw._

The bullet had been strung along a new gold chain that rippled and flowed like molten sunshine. Wordlessly, without revealing the sudden tightness the sight of it made in her chest, Alice slipped the chain over her waved Vision off to go join the others as she took a moment to collect herself.

"Everything alright?" Steve asked, approaching with an already empty plate

"Great," Alice beamed.

Steve returned it with a half-smile. "I'm glad I caught you; I made a side trip on my way out today."

Alice's smile faltered slightly, remembering the mission she'd sent him on. It was a bit selfish to send and international superhero to fight the little battles for you, but Steve had been more than willing when she'd broached the idea. _I signed a lot of death notices in my day,_ he'd said, _it'd be nice to do the opposite._

"How are they taking it?" Alice asked quietly, filling up Steve's plate again.

He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "it was…"

"Weird?" she offered.

"Tense. But-" he pulled a stack of photos held together with a rubber band out of his pocket. "They gave me some photos – I said you might not be ready, but they wanted you to know they'll go as slow as you want."

Steve set the stack down on the island instead of handing it directly to her. Alice looked at it, Steve's plate still in her hand. He took it away from her before the food ended up on the floor.

With slightly shaky hands, Alice reached for the stack, tracing the faces of the figures captured there. She recognized her own, of course, but the man to the left and the woman to the right were unfamiliar. She could guess, of course. "Sigyn," Alice whispered. She could guess that much from _Sigynsdottir._ The man was another store. "And…?

"Will," Steve supplied. "William."

_Like love, like a medal,_

_I welcome it,_

_I take it all in_

_from south, from north, from violins_

The sun set over the valley, warm light diffusing the room and shifting darker. Someone closed the windows and drew the curtains, keeping the laughter contained to the apartment.

"And I said '_boom_! You looking for this!?'" Rhodey exclaimed, dropping his hands.

Alice roared with laughter, nearly spilling wine on her sofa.

"Don't encourage him!" Tony chastised, moving the bottle out of her reach and pouring a glass.

"Uh, no drinking for drivers," Alice retorted, pulling the glass from his hands.

Tony looked aghast. "FRIDAY's gonna drive – give it here." Alice surrendered the glass and he scrutinized her, asking the group; "Who d'you think would win in a drinking contest; Thing #1, Thing #2, or Ms Etch-a-sketch?"

Sam gestured with his beer. "I'd pay money to see Alice get drunk again - blew her own time-traveling cover in about five minutes last time."

Bucky snorted. "She doesn't need to be drunk to do that - she'll blow things up just for spite."

"I would not!" Alice cried.

"_Yes you would," _chorused several voices.

_from dogs,_

_lemons, clay,_

_from newly liberated air,_

_machines smelling of mystery,_

_storm-colored shopping,_

_everything I need;_

Alice filled up half the sink with soapy water and gently started to wash up. Sam drifted over, tossing a couple of empty bottles into the recycle bin. "The cook shouldn't also clean, you know."

"Oh, I don't mind. And they all look so happy; it's nice just to watch." She gestured with her head at the mild evening conversation. The Avengers at peace.

Sam swatted her shoulder. "Get out of here; go join the conversation."

"Oh_, fine_," she gave in. Alice dried her hands on a cloth and moved slowly back into the conversation. She'd been hesitant, sometimes, to try and join the tight-knit group. They accepted new members very rarely, and usually for some significant contribution.

Vision enthusiastically beckoned her to join them. "Alice! Break the tie for us: is ketchup a smoothie?"

"My god," she mumbled, sitting on the arm of Bucky's chair, "I clearly just need to burn the building down." Bucky set a hand on her knee and Alice took it in her own, idly running her thumb across the metal joints of his knuckles.

_orange blossoms, string,_

_grapes like topazes,_

_the whiff of the waves._

_I gather it up_

_endlessly,_

_effortlessly._

_I breathe._

The crisp night poured through the open door as Alice helped her guests bundle up and head out into the evening. She loaned out a few scarves for those less prepared or not otherwise fortified by superpowers.

"Fly safe, everyone!" she called down the stairs.

"I have no say in the matter," Tony replied sassily.

Alice rolled her eyes. "Well, die then."

Someone laughed – she thought it sounded like Natasha – as Alice closed the door. Hands slid around her waist – one warm, one slightly chilly – pulling her back into a warm embrace.

"We should go somewhere tomorrow," Bucky said.

Alice wrapped her arms over his. "Oh? Have something in mind?"

He hummed thoughtfully. "Heard Steve's exhibit is closing soon."

Her heart sang, but she tried to play it cool. "Museum it is, then."

_I dry my shirt in the wind_

_and my opened heart._

_The sky falls_

_and falls._

* * *

Arnold liked to think of himself as a man who minded his own business. Living and working in the Nation's Capital he had seen his fair share of dignitaries and celebrities work their way through his place of business. Some came with security or a private tour, and some just wanted to be left alone. As a result, unless specifically asked otherwise, Arnold just let people be people.

His brainchild, the Captain America exhibit, was closing soon; due to be moved to the National Museum of American History, and he was working on his orders for what should be packed up and in what order. Attendance at the exhibit had tapered off, and the room was largely empty.

A couple sat on a bench far back from the large screen in the back of the exhibit, a smaller woman with a long braid of white-gold hair and a man with dark hair, and he could just make out their conversation. "So," the woman asked, "How's it feel to be a free man?"

Seated to her left, the man paused before answering. "I think we should get married."

Arnold would have ordinarily moved on, giving the couple their privacy, but he was an older man without many true pleasures in life and he wanted to have something sweet to tell his wife when he went home. A young couple proposing in an empty exhibit that he'd designed certainly qualified.

The young lady protested, briefly. "Oh, you don't have to, Sam was just joking around-"

Stalwart fellow, determined in his proposal, interrupted her protest. "It's got nothing to do with bird-brain. I've wanted to marry you since that first Christmas. I needed to make sure that I was okay – that I was good enough for you. And now… I think I'm okay." The man reached into his pocket, pulling out a little gold band. "This was my ma's ring."

He rolled the ring between gloved fingers, staring down at it instead of his lady. "I had a lot of really good reasons ready and had worked it all out straight, but… with you looking at me like that I've forgotten it all."

Arnold smiled to himself. _Good save._

The young man continued. "You've done so much for me, and I'd hate to ask too much, but I've got just one more thing... let me love you forever?"

The young lady cried – as all young women seem to do during proposals – and agreed with enthusiasm. Arnold left them to their youthful glow as he returned to the task of cataloguing and sorting out which items would be the most difficult to move.

In a rustle of wool coats and footsteps, the couple left not long after. They passed close by and against his usually reserved judgement Arnold snuck a quick peek, hoping to catch a glimpse of the joy on the young woman's face, or the pride in the man's eyes.

He gaped and nearly dropped his papers, his glasses slipping across his face as he scrambled to adjust them. Passing by the banner reading **The Angel of Azzano: History's Lost Howling Commando**, then past **A Fallen Comrade**, there could be no mistaking either face.

_Can't tell Madeleine,_ he thought to himself, taking a moment to gather his wits again. _She'll think I've gone round the bend._

In the spectacular future presented by a world of heroes, he'd seen enough unimaginable things happen to accept what his eyes were telling him. Arnold had seen hundreds of celebrities, and as many diplomats and politicians wander through his place of business. He'd seen a few of them pass him by, eyes somber as they counted their losses.

But he would count himself as spectacularly fortunate to know that, after all this time, Bucky Barnes and Alice Shaw had found each other again.

_From my glass,_

_I drink_

_pure joy._

* * *

_End of Line_

* * *

A/N: Thank you all so much for taking part in Alice's story.

I hope this is a story you come back to every now and again. Alice will be here waiting for you, and she tells a pretty good story. This is the end of the line for Alice – even if I picked up again with Marvel, I want to let Alice rest and have this happy ending.

As always, please leave me a final review on this story. Alice has been a big part of my head since her inception in May of 2018 and it is a little hard on me emotionally for it to be over.

Ad Astra,

Aria


	34. Our Story Continues

**Our Story Continues...**

Hello loyal WIAS/RITD readers!

Hopefully, you popped right over to FFnet upon seeing a new chapter posted for RITD. There isn't new content for RITD exactly, but my Universe is continuing in my new story for the MCU: **"Our Version of History". **Considering that WIAS was originally going to be a Steve/OC story, it only seemed fitting to actually give him a story after all.

For **Our Version of History** we examine the long-reaching impact of Alice's effect on the MCU timeline. Moreover - what happened since Steve signed the Sokovia Accords to protect his best friend?

This isn't a Bucky/Alice story, but they will make several appearances, one of which will be for a very requested event ;)

See you there,

Aria


End file.
